


this is the place where everything starts to begin

by ships_to_sail



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Grumpy dad Rafael, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sonny is a Preschool Teacher AU, gratuitous vein mentions, tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-03-13 04:33:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13562913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: The parents never quite understood how much easier it all was once they left the room.Not that he was eager to chase away this particular parent. Mr. Barba seemed intent to look just about everywhere but at Sonny, turning startling green eyes and razor sharp attention to the art on the walls, the line of cubbies with hooks beneath them, the vat of legos Chris and Natalie had just managed to dump out all over the floor. Sonny cleared his throat and held out his hand.“Nice to meet you Mr. Barba, my name is Sonny. I'm the lead teacher here in the EPK room. EPK all the way,” he added from rote, his fists shaking in the air above his head in the mock cheer he was always trying to get the kids to copy. Sonny was babbling, and treating a full grown man like a toddler.Sonny was in trouble.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to my dearest friend [thelittlestdoc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlestdoc/pseuds/thelittlestdoc) for the title, which is taken from ["The Dislocated Room"](http://crushedfingers.tumblr.com/post/390864422/the-dislocated-room-richard-siken) by Richard Siken.
> 
> All the love in the world for my lovely Barisi family, that bears with me through all my silver-haired, beanie-related feelings!

“Sonny, I've got someone to introduce you to, if you've got a minute!”

Dominic ‘Sonny’ Carisi, Jr. smiled, but internally he let out a groan. Olivia was his boss, so of course he had a minute. But did it have to be a minute when he had a diaper in one hand and a squirming toddler underneath the other?

“Sure thing, Liv, give me just one second…” he fastened the Velcro on the second side of the diaper and helped Patrick to his feet, pulling his pants up and slapping him a quick high five before setting him down on the floor. Patrick scampered off to play as Sonny stripped off his disposable gloves and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. Tossing his gloves in the trash, he spun to face Olivia and felt his stomach drop out.

Standing next to Olivia, one hand in his pocket and one hand wrapped protectively around the hand of a small girl wearing mismatched pigtails and a Star Wars shirt at least a size too big for her, was the most magnetically attractive man Sonny had ever seen. 

“Sonny, this is Mr. Barba and his daughter Daniela. Daniela will be starting in your class Monday.”

Sonny nodded and dropped into a crouch. He made it a point to always talk to the kids first. 

“How you doing, Daniela?” The girl refused to look him in the eye, twisting to hide her body behind the adult beside her. Sonny couldn't help but notice that the fabric the girl pulled gently in front of her eyes had the faintest pinstripe on it, and that the other pant leg - as well as the rest of the suit - was incredibly well tailored. He stood and smiled, hating that awkward tension that always fell when he tried to bond with the kids and failed so spectacularly while their parents looked on. The parents never quite understood how much easier it all was once they left the room.

Not that he was eager to chase away this particular parent. Mr. Barba seemed intent to look just about everywhere but at Sonny, turning startling green eyes and razor sharp attention to the art on the walls, the line of cubbies with hooks beneath them, the vat of legos Chris and Natalie had just managed to dump out all over the floor. Sonny cleared his throat and held out his hand.

“Nice to meet you Mr. Barba, my name is Sonny. I'm the lead teacher here in the EPK room. EPK all the way,” he added from rote, his fists shaking in the air above his head in the mock cheer he was always trying to get the kids to copy. Sonny was babbling, and treating a full grown man like a toddler. 

Sonny was in trouble. 

Barba cocked an eyebrow. “Yes, I managed to work that out. How long have you been a teacher, Mr. Carisi?”

“Please, call me Sonny. And, uh, about four months.” He cut a, nervous glance at Olivia, who did her best to look reassuring. Sonny looked back to Mr. Barba and did his best to hold the man's gaze. Easier said than done as Sonny felt himself begin to blush. “I'm just helping Olivia out during the summer months until, well, I mean,” he waved his hand in the air vaguely. He'd actually forgotten he wasn't going back to Fordham in the fall; he wasn't sure what the second half of that sentence was supposed to be anymore.

“Ah, well, as long as you've got a long-term plan, I guess.” One corner of his mouth tilted up, and Sonny felt unmoored. He opened his mouth to explain, to rebut, but Mr. Barba had already turned his body back to Olivia, asking her for repeated details on tuition rates, nap schedules, and curriculum overviews.

Sonny sighed and cringed internally, doing what he always did when things with the adults got awkward -joining the kids. He slid to the floor, tucked his long legs up around his ears, and before he could say “boy howdy" he was wearing a teddy bear as a hat and had three four year olds having a tea party in his lap. He giggled at their banter, gratefully accepted an imaginary coffee and a plate of plastic pizza. He was just getting ready to stand up and get snack ready when a shadow fell over him.

Mr. Barba was standing above him, arms crossed and grin cocky.

Sonny was in so, so much trouble. Beyond trouble.

“It was lovely to meet you, Mr. Carisi.”

“Please, call me Sonny,” he said again as he stood up as quickly as he could with three toddlers attached to his legs. He held out a hand, and this time Barba shook it. His hands were warm, dry, a smooth copper color with short fingers and big knuckles and Sonny almost swallowed his tongue.

“Daniela should be here three times a week, Mr. Carisi,” Mr. Barba continued, pulling his hand back from the handshake that had just turned in to hand holding. “She'll be with her mother a fair amount at the Broadwood school.” He said it like everyone in the world should know the name. Which, Sonny did, but that's because everyone in child care knew about the hippy dippy Montessori school that laid claim to ‘graduates' who went on to ivy leagues, boardrooms, and judge benches. It was the kind of school that made St.Catherine's look like high dollar babysitting. Sonny tried to hide his rising hackles at the mention of the other school, and plastered a plastic grin on his face.

“We'll be thrilled to have her, as often as we can get her here.”

“I'll have my secretary Carmen fax over a copy of my custody calendar. Ms. Benson also mentioned weekly status updates, so I'll have Carmen include my phone number.”

Sonny started. “Oh, um, sure Mr. Barba but we usually just email them out at the end of every Friday.”

“Well I'm sure that's delightful for your other families, but I get a lot of emails Mr. Carisi and I wouldn't want to miss any pertinent information concerning my daughter.”

Sonny cleared his throat and tried not to think about weekly phone calls with a man whose finger size he'd already made a mental note of. “Yeah, no, of course not. I'd be happy to call with the information. Is there a time during the day that would work best?”

The other man wrinkled his brow and wiped out his phone, clicking and scrolling with sharp taps that sounded almost painful.

“Unfortunately I'm due in court most Fridays for, well, forever, so it'll have to be an evening call. Say 8pm?” He glanced at Sonny and a flash of concern crossed his face. “I'm happy to speak to Olivia about additional compensation, as I'm aware that falls outside your normal work hours.”

Sonny blushed and waved the words away. “That won't be necessary, Mr. Barba. It'd be my pleasure to discuss Daniela with you, whenever you have the time.” Why did the man make it sound like he was arranging something far more illicit than a weekly status update on his daughter? And worse, why did his response make him sound like maybe he might be super into that?

Mr. Barba nodded and shoved his phone bank in his pocket. He reached out for one final handshake, their business concluded, and this time when Sonny’s grip filled his, he squeezed and pulled the other man forward. Just a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. Enough that Sonny shivered, and hoped the other man didn't notice. From the spark in his eyes, Sonny hadn't been so lucky. “One more thing, Mr. Carisi.”

“Hmm?”

“Mr. Barba was my father's name. Call me Rafael.” With one curt nod of his head, he turned smarty and walked out of the room. He closed the door behind him, and Sonny tried not to notice how good the view from behind was, too.

Sonny was so completely fucked.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first Friday Carisi made a phone call to Barba’s office, he was put on hold for twenty minutes and then kindly asked to leave a detailed message with Mr. Barba’s secretary. When he saw the man in person the following week, Rafael acted as though Daniela had been coming for years, not days, as he simply opened the door, a cellphone clamped between his ear and his shoulder, and gently slid the little girl inside, shutting the door behind her with the merest chin raise in Sonny’s direction. He wasn’t the only parent to handle drop-off like that, but for some reason it rubbed Sonny the wrong way. When a second, and then third week passed in a similar fashion, Sonny felt itchy under his skin whenever he thought of Rafael Barba.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all of you who are responsible for the Crown Vic. You know who you are.
> 
> This chapter is entirely unbeta'd, so that thing that's bugging you? It's my fault.
> 
> Be sure to tip your fic writers with all that comment/kudos love.

Sonny had been around kids his entire life. First, his little sister Bella, and then the kids that Teresa and Gina would take care of for babysitting money. He’d never necessarily loved it, but he was always good at it, good with the kids. So when his dad had passed, and Sonny knew his too-short time at Fordham was drawing to a close, it hadn’t taken much to convince Sonny to give his mom’s old friend, Olivia, a call. Olivia had been delighted - there were far too few men in the field, they were always on the lookout for male teachers to give some of their male kiddos more to relate to in the classroom. It sounded like bullshit to Sonny, but there was something awed about the way parents - especially fathers - would perk up when they noticed him teaching. 

But not Rafael Barba.

The first Friday Carisi made a phone call to Barba’s office, he was put on hold for twenty minutes and then kindly asked to leave a detailed message with Mr. Barba’s secretary. When he saw the man in person the following week, Rafael acted as though Daniela had been coming for years, not days, as he simply opened the door, a cellphone clamped between his ear and his shoulder, and gently slid the little girl inside, shutting the door behind her with the merest chin raise in Sonny’s direction. He wasn’t the only parent to handle drop-off like that, but for some reason it rubbed Sonny the wrong way. When a second, and then third week passed in a similar fashion, Sonny felt itchy under his skin whenever he thought of Rafael Barba.

By the end of Daniela’s first month in class, Sonny was done. Done with the cold reserve, done with the feelings of imposition every time he had to ask Rafael for more diapers, or to send Daniela with a coat because they might still go outside, yes in November, yes in New York. Done with Friday nights spent on hold because he was a man of his word and Rafael was a man who couldn't be bothered. He tried to vent to his coworkers, to Amanda in the infant room, even to Olivia once, pouring his tall frame into a chair meant for a kindergartener and doing his best to cover his complaints in hypotheticals and metaphors. 

“I know it gets to you, Sonny, and I’m sorry,” Liv said after a few minutes of hemming and hawing from Sonny about rushed parents who couldn’t be bothered. “I know how much miss your dad-” Sonny’s ears filled with the sound of blood pounding in his veins and he felt the sudden need to pull at his collar. He pressed his lips together in to a thin line and clenched his fists to keep his hands from shaking. Liv must have seen his reaction, because she pulled back some. “Not everyone’s that lucky, Sonny. Would it make you feel better if I told you Rafael was newly a single dad?”

Sonny felt the sudden and surprising prick of tears at the corner of his eyes. Liv’s eyes widened as she heard what she’d said in context and immediately rushed to course-correct. “Oh, God, no Sonny. Everyone’s fine. He’s divorced, not widowed.” Sonny took a deep breath and nodded. He wasn’t sure why it mattered, outside the fact that he was having enough trouble coping as an adult, he couldn’t wish what he was feeling on someone still shy of their fourth birthday. Even so.

“Shockingly enough, Liv, that still doesn’t make me feel a ton better. Also, are you allowed to tell me that?” Liv shrugged.

“Probably not. Just don’t tell anyone I told you. And don’t tell Rafael you know. That I can guarantee you he wouldn’t be happy about.”

“Then why did you tell me?” Sonny didn't love the idea of lying by omission to any parent, but especially not to Rafael and especially not about something like this.

Liv studied him, leaning back in her chair and pulling her hair into a ponytail, picking a pen up off her desk and weaving it through the updo until it stayed put, barely. Her eyes were focused but far away, a mixture Sonny never figured out how she mastered. Finally, the corners of her lips turned up in a small smile. “I don’t know. Because I think it’ll help your reserves of sympathy. Because I think it means you might have more in common with Daniela than a lot of the people in her life. Mostly because Rafa is my friend, and I think he needs a little slack.”

“Well, he’s got to actually talk to me first,” Sonny said petulantly. He hadn’t wanted news about Rafael’s divorce to make him feel better, but it did. And he felt bad for being happy it was ‘only' a divorce. And then he felt bad for feeling bad, and for not feeling all that bad for Barba. It was a whole cycle of feelings that Sonny had been riding too much since his dad died. Too bad he didn’t know where the off switch was. He was surprised to hear Liv laugh. A real, bring laugh that brought color to her cheeks and a shine to her eyes. He didn’t hear her laugh like that often

“Oh, Sonny. Here’s a little tip, from me to you: if you can find any parent willing to have a long conversation about all the things someone else thinks they’re doing wrong, I’ll give you this entire business.”

“But. I don’t wanna - I don’t think he’s doing anything wrong. Not really. I just want-"

“What, Sonny? What do you want?” The question cut him off, but it wasn’t an angry question. Liv was looking at him again, intently, an eyebrow raised like she was daring him to answer. Sonny shifted, uncomfortable for the first time. Liv knew about him - he hadn’t felt comfortable taking a job with kids without telling her he was bisexual. He didn’t care, and he knew she didn’t either, but he didn’t ever want it to be a thing for the parents so he’d outed himself during the interview. And, with the exception of a few whispers and wayward glances, it hadn’t seemed to matter thus far.

But it sure as shit felt like it mattered now, with Liv sitting across her desk from him, hands crossed in front of her chest and that look on her face. That look like she knew what Sonny was going to say before he did. The expectation was what killed him, because he wasn't being flip or coy - he really didn't know what it was he wanted from Barba. More affection for Daniela? More attention for him? Both? Neither?

‘I don’t know. I guess I just want him to be better for Daniela. She deserves a dad who can give her a hug before he goes to work.”

“Better. For Daniela.”

“Yeah. For Daniela. What’s so wrong about that?”

“Nothing, nothing!” Liv stood and began to stretch, and Sonny took that as his cue. She was heading home, and he didn’t have to do the same but he couldn’t stay in her office anymore. “Just so long as it’s about Daniela, alright? Parent/teacher relationships are to be kept strictly professional,” she used her business voice to quote the employee handbook at him. 

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I remember. I signed the handbook, didn’t I?”

“Yes, yes you did.” She cut a sideways glance at him. “Good luck, Sonny. With Rafa. And Daniela.” Sonny nodded and gave her a gentle hug, making his way to the parking lot and waiting until she locked the building and had pulled away until he started his car.

Well, so much for sorting that out, Sonny thought as his Crown Vic rumbled beneath him and his forehead came to rest on his steering wheel.


	3. Chapter Three

For all of Olivia’s solid advice, by the time another month of Friday blow-offs and run arounds had passed, Sonny decided the time had come for extreme measures.

Which is why he found himself in deadlock traffic on a Friday night, singing quietly to Patsy Cline on his way to the office of the District Attorney. He squinted at the glare off the car in front of him and tried not to look too closely at the other choices he should most likely be making.

There was nothing requiring him to report to Rafael at all, other than the school policy, which technically only required an email. But he'd shaken Rafael’s hand and looked him in the eye and said okay. And if he wanted another chance to see those deep set green eyes and that tiny twist of smile again, to think about what other kinds of things might make the man smile, well. He had to have something for the confessional booth, right? 

He stretched his arm over the back of the bench seat, his fingers tracing velvet as he tried to resist checking his watch. It wasn't going to say anything different than it had when he'd looked at it four minutes ago. He exhaled heavily through his nose as the traffic moved forward another inch. 

After three hours and about $15 in prepaid parking time, Sonny was regretting this entire trip, as he stood with his hands shoved in his pockets and strained to hear exactly what it was Mr. Barba’s secretary said to introduce him. Whatever it was, he didn't have to strain to hear Mr. Barba’s response. 

“I don't have time for this, Carmen, did you tell him I don't-”

His voice dropped out as Carmen responded and Sonny briefly weighed the mortification of staying with the delayed embarrassment of seeing the man in his classroom next week. Before he could make up his mind, he heard Barba huff.

“Fine, fine, just show him in. And tell Judge Stevens I'll have to call him back, schedule it for 10 tomorrow and then reschedule brunch with my mother.”

Carmen slid smoothly back into the room and crossed to her desk with a gentle, entirely false smile on her face. “Mr. Barba would be happy to speak with you. Right this way, please,” and she gestured towards Barba’s open door. 

“Yeah, sounds it,” he couldn't help but mutter under his breath as he walked past her. He thought maybe he heard he snort, but the sound was covered by the gentle click shut of the office door. 

Rafael was standing behind his desk, his jacket and waistcoat on the chair behind him, his pale green shirt sleeves cuffed past his elbows. There were files of paper, legal pads, and an Office Max worth of pens, highlighters, and post-it notes scattered on the desk in front of him. The soft lighting of the antique lamps seemed to burnish his already bronze skin, casting him in a glow that made Sonny simultaneously weak in the knees, and hungry to run his tongue up the vein running from watch to elbow. Rafael hadn't seemed to notice his entrance, or was doing a hell of a job pretending, and Sonny counted to five before clearing his throat and taking a half step towards the desk. “Mr. Barba?”

“I thought I asked you to call me Rafael,” the other man said, another few beats passing before he finally looked up from the sheaf of papers he was holding. “What can I do for you, Mr. Carisi?”

“You missed your call about Daniela last week, and I thought you might appreciate finally getting an update.” His voice was surprisingly even, considering how nervous he was. He knew he needed to be here, knew it in his heart, but something about Rafael Barba made him feel like he was on the verge of coming unglued.

“And a phone call, like we discussed?” He raised an eyebrow. “That would no longer have been sufficient?”

“I'm sure it would have, had you managed to answer any of my other phone calls this month. Or last,” Sonny added after a beat. 

Rafael studied Sonny for a moment, his brow furrowing slightly before his mouth curled up at the corners and he made a little ‘hm’ sound. He tossed the folder on his desk and motioned towards the chairs in front of him. Sonny sat without hesitation, crossing one long leg so that his ankle rested on his knee and his fingers drummed up and down the sole of his Converse.

Rafael crossed and stood in front of his desk, his ass perched on the edge and his hips so close to Sonny's crossed leg he felt the other man's heat. It was like he was made of fire, smouldering embers covered over with a thin layer of ash. Well, hopefully thin, anyway. Rafael rested his hands on the desk edge next to him and spoke with a low, tired voice. 

“Do you have any idea what it is I do, Mr. Carisi?”

“You're the ADA. Liv told me.”

“But do you know what it is I do?”

Sonny opened his mouth to respond and realized, for once, that he didn't have anything to say. He was sure his canned response from his Fordham textbook wasn't what Rafael had in mind. He simply shook his head and waited.

Rafael pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. “I didn't think so. Everyday I try and put the most disgusting people you can imagine in jail. It's justice. It's the law.”

Sonny snorted and rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. Rafael looked genuinely shocked, his jaw dropping ever so slightly. 

“Sorry, Mr. Bar- Rafael. But...really? You know I teach kids, not that I am one, right? Plus, I've got a year at Fordham Law under wraps, so maybe if we fast forward through the ‘What A Lawyer Is 101’ speech, we can talk about why I'm here. Daniela.”

“If you'll indulge me, Mr. Carisi, I was getting to that. If we skip past all the 101, as you so respectfully put it, we can talk about the fact that in addition to being justice and the law, it's also exhausting, and not something I care to have Daniela around, even in name, as much as I can help it.”

Sonny took a deep breath and sat back. He did his best to keep still, to put a pause on the frenetic energy that always seemed to be running right underneath his skin. He understood what Rafael was trying to say, where he was coming from. Having to mentally connect his beautiful daughter with the kind of work he did, even in the most tangential way, would be hard for any parent. Let alone one still learning to fly solo.

But all Sonny could see was a curly headed girl, too quiet for her age in shirts a size too.big, a girl who loved to finger paint but hated being dirty and didn't nap unless Sonny was holding her hand. When he spoke again, his voice was more desperate that he intended.

“Then, please, Mr. Barba, just. Let me email you. Or call you at home, so you don't have to talk about her here. I just, I want to get you the info you need.”

Rafael scoffed. “Home, huh, yes, well. I'd be delighted, you see, but I'm afraid my now ex wife is no longer accepting overnight visits and my car hasn't had a phone since 1987.”

Sonny blinked slowly, putting the pieces together through the snark and dismissal. “You're… you're homeless?”

“I am most certainly not homeless, Mr. Carisi! I am...between residences, and spending the bulk of my time here in my offices.”

“Well. Then I'll come here.” Sonny declared with ten times the amount of confidence he felt. He hadn't known that was the plan before he’d spoken, but once the words were out, he couldn't really take them back. “Well, not here here,” he attempted to course correct. “But here in the city. I can come in on Fridays and give you the report in person.”

Rafael just raised an eyebrow, running a long look over Sonny as he sat in the chair in front of him. Sonny felt himself blush and knew he was as transparent as a friggin’ window. And if he hadn't known it, Rafael’s next words would have cemented it.

“You want to spend your Friday nights driving into the city to talk to me about my daughter.” His tone made it sound like Sonny had proposed and trip to the moon for ice cream. “I can't imagine St. Catherine's has a lot of extra in its budget to pay overtime for that kind of...intense dedication to parental communication.”

Sonny rolled his eyes and fidgeted in his chair, suddenly obsessed with the fraying threads of his shoelaces. “Well. Consider it my Good Works for the year, then, Mr. Barba.”

Rafael chuckled, an honest to God laugh without any of the bite or venom Sonny was already coming to expect alongside the sound. “Alright, Mr. Carisi. I suppose if you want to use your limited free time coming into the city to rehash what you're already spending 40 billable hours a week doing, I can't stop you.”

Sonny fought to hold on to the joy of Rafael while ignoring the way his words scraped. That was his daughter he so cavalierly called a ‘rehash’. Sonny wanted so very badly to give him the benefit of the doubt, to think that Rafael hadn't actually heard what he said. That he wouldn't have said it if he had. 

Sonny nodded and stood up, a relieved smile on his face as he stuck out a hand to Rafael. “That's all I ask.”

Rafael shook Sonny's hand, but held tight when the other man tried to pull away. “No time like the present, right Mr. Carisi?”

Sonny gulped and nodded, his stomach flipping at the gentle graze of Rafael’s fingers alongside the inside of his wrist as he let go. Sonny shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to get his breath under control. Panting and flushed were good looks on Sonny, or so he'd been told, but now definitely wasn't the time or place. Sonny cleared his throat.

“It's getting late, and I know you have work to do…”

Barba huffed and grabbed his waistcoat, slipping the buttons closed, and Sonny couldn't tear his eyes away from those thick fingers. When they disappeared inside Rafael’s jacket, however, Sonny pulled himself together in enough time to avoid embarrassment. He hoped.

“You pretty much put an end to my work for the evening, Mr. Carisi, and like you mentioned, I'm behind on hearing all about my beautiful daughter, so shall we?”

Rafael held out an arm and gestured Sonny through his office door. Sonny waited while Rafael gave orders to Carmen to go home and be back at eight tomorrow, and then fell into step beside the man as the two made their way to the elevator.

“Oh, and Mr. Carisi? Her name is Penny and I'd be happy to give you her card.” Sonny just stares, bewildered, and Rafael’s lips twitched in a way that could only be described as evil. “My manicurist. I saw you looking and just thought you might be in need of a reference.”

Rafael hit the button for the ground floor and Sonny wanted to melt through the bedrock to the core of the earth.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before the plague hit, so the next chapters might be a bit while my lungs remember how to get oxygen to the rest of my body.
> 
> All the thanks in the world to AHumanFemale, whose beta made this infinitely better.

Despite how many times Rafael assured him otherwise, Sonny felt remarkably underdressed for the low-lit bar they’d gone to for dinner. Rafael held the the door open while Sonny passed, so close he could feel the heat radiating off the other man. He wasn't a mess or anything, but his dark wash jeans, Fordham Intramural Baseball t-shirt, and thick grey cardigan were no match for the suits, heels, and designer accessories he saw on the people all around him. 

Including the one he was currently following to the back corner of the restaurant and a table partially hidden behind an offshoot of the bar. Rafael removed his coat and draped it across the back of his chair while Sonny sat and tried to keep his mind off just how romantically shadowed this little corner was. Rafael ordered a neat two fingers of a liquor Sony didn't recognize and then looked at him expectantly across the table. 

Sonny suddenly felt like this was some kind of test he needed to pass, so he decided skip the IPA he would have normally ordered in favor of a seven and seven, a drink his grandfather had been enormously fond of. He was tempted to fist pump when Rafael quirked an eyebrow and a small smile tugged up the corner of his lips.

“I wouldn't have take you for a whiskey fan, Mr. Carisi. I assumed you'd be more the seasonal pale ale type.”

“Well, you know what happens when you assume, Mr. Barba,” he said, his tone dry but his eyes dancing.

“Please, Mr. Carisi. We've been over this. It's Rafael.”

“I'll show you mine when you show me yours, alright,” Sonny quipped, his eyes going wide as his brain caught up with his mouth and he shoved his fist into the tight line of his lips. Rafael snorted out a laugh, almost choking as he laughed into his napkin and Sonny balled his hands into fists on his knees.

“Look, Mr.- Rafael, I just meant that-”

Rafael held up a hand before he could finish. “Please, Mr. Carisi,” he said, wiping tears of laughter off his cheeks, taking a pause as the waitress set their drinks down. As she walked away, Rafael took a long drink of the amber liquid in his glass and Sonny watched every minute movement of his Adam's apple. “I think I get your point, Sonny.”

Sonny felt his shoulders relax slightly and he nodded, raising his own glass to his lips. If he hadn't been so obsessed with Rafael’s every move, he might have missed the way Rafael watched him, green eyes focused on full pink lips as they wrapped over the edge of the glass. The burn of good whiskey was sharper than he remembered, though, and he grimaced slightly at the burn in his chest.

Rafael stopped laughing and considered him. Sonny set his glass down and ran his fingers around the rim, wondering if this was what criminals on the stand felt like, being slowly unravelled by that devastating stare. Probably not, he admitted to himself, but he also wasn't complaining.

“You don't like your drink, do you Sonny?” Rafael’s voice was casual but Sonny still shivered at the sound of his name carried so casually in the other man's mouth. Sonny considered the question and cleared his throat.

“It's not my favorite, no, but I don't dislike it.” It seemed the most honest lie.

“What would you have ordered if I weren't here?”

“If you weren't here I wouldn't be ordering, because I wouldn't be here.”

Rafael just kept his gaze level and his eyebrow quirked. Sonny looked down and began to mess with his fingernails, shrugging a shoulder. “There's this local brewery that does a New Year's pale ale that I really like…” he trailed off, expecting another round of laughter from the man.

Instead, Rafael simply picked up Sonny's glass and marched over to the bar. He waved down the bartender and, after a few tense minutes in which Rafael tried to explain that nothing was wrong with the seven and seven, he just needed a beer he didn't know the name of, Sonny was surprised to see a full glass of beer sweating slightly on the table in front of him.

“Thank you,” he replied sincerely, clinking his glass against Rafael’s before taking a long drink, a grateful sigh escaping as he licked his lips and sat back in his chair. 

“You’re welcome, Sonny. You know…” he trailed off, his eyes distant, as though he was weighing words in his head. “There isn’t a right answer here,” he gestured to the drinks in each of their hands. “It’s not a test, and you’re not on trial.”

“Aren’t I?”

Rafael made a sound that was half laugh, half snort, and took another sip of his drink. “It’s possible that I’ve been told before that I can come off a bit judgemental. Cold, even. I wanted to assure you that this isn’t the case. Or, at least,” another drink, “I’m working on it no longer being the case.”

Sonny found he didn’t care much for the idea of someone telling Rafael that he was cold on the inside, even if he’d been thinking something not too far off on his drive to the city not a few hours ago. Sonny leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Nah, Rafael, I don’t think that.” He rubbed the back of his neck and tried again. “Well, okay. Yeah. You can come off a bit intense.” Rafael laughed and raised his glass in Sonny’s direction before draining the rest of the contents. “But, I promise. The drink thing was stupid. I wouldn’t lie about the things that really matter.”

“Like my daughter,” Rafael drawled into the silence that settled between them, a beat too late and too long to keep up the appearance of casual

“Yeah,” Sonny said, nodding fervently. “Like your daughter.” Rafael raised a hand for a second round of drinks, and Sonny agreed, adding an order for half a dozen clams oreganta. He was starving, and at the rate they were drinking, he wouldn’t able to keep up on an empty stomach. The two made small talk until the next round of drinks arrived - the weather on the walk over, the blessings of a good drink at the end of a long day - and Sonny managed to eat a little. Although, it didn’t escape his notice that Rafael substituted round three in place of any actual food. Sonny waited until he’d finished half the food on the plate and had a third beer of his own before he decided to finally steer the conversation back around to where it was supposed to have been all along.

“So, Rafael.”

“So, Sonny.”

“Daniela.”

Rafael sat up a little straighter in his seat, and if Sonny’s eyes could be believed, managed at least a brief attempt at admonishment. “Daniela,” he repeated.

“Daniela is wonderful, Rafael. She’s smart, she’s a hard worker, she’s so incredibly polite. She loves to help the other kids put toys away before circle time, and she knows exactly which train car each kid loves the most during our small groups. She says please and thank you, when she decides to talk. You should be really, really proud of the little person she’s growing up to be,” Sonny watched as an expression halfway through pride and distress flitted across his face. The color rose in his cheeks and Sonny was surprised at the strength of his desire to put that same rosy glow there again and again.

“But,” he continued, unable to meet Sonny’s eyes as he ran a finger around the edge of his glass.

“But. She is lonely, Rafael. Deeply, profoundly lonely. So much so that I don’t even think she realizes how not normal it is to feel that way.” Sonny’s voice was low, but confidant. He didn’t know how else to say it, and he hated it because he knew how much it would hurt Rafael to hear. How much it would hurt any parent to hear.

Sure enough, Sonny watched Rafael’s shoulder slump as he curled into himself, and Sonny could almost see another brick slip into the wall that Rafael had clearly already built.

“There’s no way you can know that,” Rafael said, his voice half-sneer, half-desperation, wanting so badly to think that maybe Sonny was wrong. 

The other man held up his hands and tried to choose his words carefully. As wonderful as the food had been, as much as he enjoyed getting to know more of this Rafael Barba that came out in the shadows and the bottom of a highball glass, the truth of the matter was that he was a teacher, Daniela was a student, and Rafael was a parent with a lot of work to do. 

“Look, alright. I’m not a child psychologist, I can’t give you an official breakdown of what’s going on in her head, and I don’t want you to think that Daniela isn’t doing well. She’s developing normally, she’s hitting all the markers she needs to hit. But...do you know what she does every day at nap time?”

Rafael shook his head. “She never naps with me. She never has. When she’s with me and Maris - I'm not really sure. Her mother never brings it up.”

Sonny onted the way Rafael’s voice caught when he’d tried to say ‘Marisol’, the name of Daniela’s mother. Sonny had read through Daniela’s file more than one, trying to get to know her father through the scant details available. Rafael was trying and failing to distance himself from the woman, and Sonny didn’t know why. So many complicated layers of dynamics to dig through, and suddenly found he was tired.

Maybe he’d had one too many beers, maybe some wiser part of him had been trying to take control when he’d first recommended putting this dinner off. Whatever it was, he felt the thread of his patience shorten considerably and he tried to remember the Rafael of the last few hours over the Rafael of the last several weeks. 

“Well, every day when nap time comes we get on our cots and sing our good night song and we go to sleep, and she cries.”

“Lots of kids cry, I’m sure.”

“Well, yeah. But most kids it’s five minutes. Maybe ten on a bad day. With Daniela, it’s the entire two hours. And she doesn't just cry, Rafael. She sobs, she shakes, unless I hold her hand. No one else. And I've seen students with separation anxiety and I've seen kids with night terrors but...in so many ways I've never met a kid like Daniela, Mr. Barba. And I think,” Sonny cleared his throat and said a little prayer to St. Catherine that he'd still have a job after this dinner, “maybe she needs more help than she's getting right now, from someone more qualified than me.”

He saw Rafael swallow and could practically taste the bile in his own mouth. Rafael ran a hand along the side of his face and Sonny could hear the scratch of stubble. “Okay,” he finally said. Like Sonny had told him the wine was gone, or that the kitchen was out of chicken piccata so he'd have to switch to steak. Sonny felt frustration roil through his gut.

Maybe it was the resignation in Rafael’s voice. Maybe it was the way he looked at Sonny, confused and scared and like he needed Sonny to fix it. But Sonny wasn’t Daniela’s father, Sonny didn’t even have a father of his own anymore, and he shouldn’t have to explain any of that to Rafael. He finished the rest of his beer and set it down on the table with a loud click.

“Okay?” He felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Such a smart man to be so, so stupid. “For the record, Mr. Barba, ‘okay’ might be considered a very  _ cold  _ way to respond to the news that your three year old daughter spends hours every day crying,” he spat, throwing the man's earlier words back in his face. He was being cruel, and he hated that it felt good.

“I don't know what I'm supposed to do,” Rafael mumbled, his voice clogged like he was speaking through cotton. Sonny’s back ached, his muscles were fighting so hard to keep him from shaking. A voice in the back of his head told him to be careful, to back off, that something about his reaction was beyond the level it needed to be. There was something poking at the back of his brain, a voice that wondered what it meant for him, a man blessed with such a good father of his own, to be so attracted to a man who not only was falling short as a dad, but didn't seem to care. Not enough. Not enough to take action. To listen. It smacked of disrespect, and Sonny couldn't reconcile why. Not tonight, not during this conversation. 

He took a few deep breaths, and when he spoke again his voice was strained, but less angry. 

“You’re supposed to be as good a father to Daniela as you are an attorney to the people of Manhattan.”

When Rafael looked at him, Sonny felt a chip of ice shear off his heart. If he wasn’t careful, it would cut him. 

“I don’t know how to do that,” Rafael said, his voice hoarse. “I’ve had my entire life to prepare for being a lawyer.”

“And you've had three plus years now to be ready to be a dad to that little girl.” 

Sonny wasn't angry anymore. Almost. Now he was just...sad. Here was a man so good at so many things and the one thing someone else needed him to be  _ the best  _ at and he hadn’t been bothered to learn. Rafael’s face flushed crimson and his brows wrinkled in confusion. He opened his mouth to explain, to excuse, to spin words of good intentions intended to cover a multitude of sins, and this time Sonny didn’t want to hear it.

He stood up and desperately wished he’d worn a coat, if for no other reason than to have something to do with his hands. He pulled a twenty dollar bill out of the back pocket on his jeans and threw it on the table before shoving his hands as deep into his pockets as they would go.

“Look, Mr. Barba. I don’t know if this is actually going to be a sustainable situation for me. I’m honored to be Daniela’s teacher, and I’m happy to add your email to our weekly classroom status updates. But.” Sonny took a deep breath and looked around him, taking one last mental picture of the dark oak wood burnished to an ethereal glow by the dim golden lights overhead, before heading back to the Crown Vic and Staten Island. “But I think it’ll be best if I stay Mr. Carisi, and you stay Mr. Barba. I’ll see you Monday.”

He hadn’t opened the door on the way into the restaurant, so maybe it had always felt this heavy, but the air outside was colder than any January New York night had any business being, and the drive back to Staten Island had never felt so long.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would be a complete mess without the amazing beta by barbaxcarisi. My eternal gratitude, darling!

Sonny's Monday morning alarm sounded through the empty apartment and he groaned, his anxious stomach from the night before having morphed into something that was  _ definitely  _ closer to actual illness than nerves. His worn white t-shirt was practically translucent with sweat, and his sheets clung to him like a second skin. He shoved all of his covers to the floor, and immediately regretted it, shivering so hard the muscles in his jaw hurt.

He opened one eye enough to tap out a text to Liv that he wouldn’t be making it in today, and then shut off his phone, turned to face the wall, and fell back into a series of forgettable fever dreams. 

On Tuesday, he was able to sit up in his bed, keep down almost half a sleeve of crackers, and even wrangle a new blanket and pillow case onto the swamp his bed was becoming. 

Wednesday brought a shower, alternating bowls of soup and glasses of Sprite, and a phone call to the pharmacy that netted him his body weight in Tylenol and Dayquil. 

By Thursday, he admitted to himself that, really, he was feeling much better and, by Friday, there wasn’t any other word for it - he was hiding. He puttered around his apartment, rewashing his sheets and pillowcases, scrubbing the corners of his kitchen and along his baseboards in a way he hadn’t since move-in day. 

He alphabetized all the books on his shelf, and then tore them all off and rearranged them by genre. He threw all the expired spices out of his cabinets and walked to the farmers market early Sunday morning to buy fresh ones. By the time Sunday evening rolled around - usually his favorite time of week, reserved for practicing new recipes or reading a book for fun or seeing if John or Tommy were up for playing some Call of Duty - Sonny was so full of restless, nervous energy he felt like it might be worth braving the cold to run out the extra energy.

He didn’t, hoping instead that couple of local lagers and his tried-and-true DVD of Otis Redding Live in Concert would do the trick. The lagers helped weigh his legs down, stopping their incessant jittering, and Otis always made him feel a little better in the places his heart hurt, but nothing could shut up the constant voice in the back of his head, poking at him with all the possible ways tomorrow would suck. There was no avoiding seeing Rafael again. 

He was up before his alarm, not having slept more than a few hours, and the circles under his eyes made him look sicker than he’d been when he’d woken up a week ago. He shrugged on his favorite grey henley and a pair of dark wash jeans and laced his chucks, unable to choke down more than half a banana and a cup of coffee before he was sliding onto the cold leather bench seat of the Crown Vic and pulling out onto the dawn-deserted street. 

Not since his first day had he been so nervous. Teachers and parents alike drifted past his open door, wishing him happy returns and filling him in on the dozens of tiny anecdotes he missed while being gone. Grayson had finally lost his last tooth, Lucy and Leo were gone with lice.

Some of his best work friends stopped by, Amanda to introduce him to LJ, the new Terror of Infant One and Erika, the newest toddler teacher, stopped by on her way to the gym with her kids in tow. In the week he’d been gone, his not-so-secret Margot had gone from waddling to walking, running across the room to him with a megawatt smile. He swooped her up, twirling her once before placing a soft kiss to the top of her fly-away blonde hair. 

Sonny slipped back into the familiar routine of the classroom, circle time followed by snacks, endless repetitions of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and  _ Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See  _ that soon became more meditative than anything. By the time he was done with the second diaper change of the day and was dishing up lunch - fourteen plates of spaghetti, applesauce, and broccoli, and God how he hated spaghetti day - the gnawing sense of anxiety had finally released its grip on Sonny’s stomach. He got the kids fed, changed again, and all down for their naps at relatively the same time, and then fate smiled on him and all of them actually fell asleep. 

Sonny collapsed on to the floor next to Jacob, a pile of paperwork on his clipboard, and began to play catch-up on the last weeks’ status reports, curriculum reviews, and menu updates for the allergy-having kids in his class. He put his signature on the final status update, filled out a request for time off for Bella’s birthday, and got all of the afternoon snacks dished out. One by one, tiny bodies dislodged themselves from sleep, and Sonny helped them put their shoes back on and changed their diapers for a fourth time, waiting until everyone was seated to vacuum the room, bag up the trash, and wish his co-teacher a pleasant evening on his way out the door. One of the only perks of the 7am opening shift was getting to leave early. He’d miss pick-up with some of his less chatty parents, but for his first Monday back, he wasn’t complaining.

He didn’t let himself admit that the reason he’d been so damn happy to settle in to the day was the fact that, by eleven o’clock, he’d known Daniela wasn’t coming. Which should have upset him, concerned him, caused him curiosity at the very least. But he just couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of relief at the knowledge that, if Daniela wasn’t coming, that meant Rafael wasn’t either. 

*

The days of the week often blurred together for Sonny, one of the drawbacks to a small life structured by a fairly rigid schedule. So while of course he noticed every day that Daniela wasn’t there, it was somewhat of a surprise to him that they’d reached Friday afternoon and he’d gone two entire weeks without seeing her or her father. 

He was tempted to stop by Olivia’s on his way out the door on Friday, but the sight of her closed, dark office reminded him that she’d taken off early, and that he was the last person in the building anyway. He set the alarm code and made his way across the parking lot, his key barely in the door when a flurry of movement caught his eye at the front of the building.

A cab had stopped curbside and a shorter, well-dressed man was pouring himself out of the backseat, his legs seeming half a second behind his brain as he attempted to navigate the extremely complicated engineering of the curb-grass-sidewalk transition. He hesitated, tempted to just get in his car and go home, but a familiar sarcastic tone made the hairs on the back of his next stand on end, and that nervous feeling in his gut came roaring back. 

“Mr. Barba,” Sonny drawled as he walked up on the man, still sitting where he’d landed on the grass, the ass of his suit pants already darkening as he tried to get his weight distributed evenly enough to stand up. Sonny’s voice startled him, and he jumped a clear few inches into the air.

Sonny wanted to laugh, but didn’t. Rafael Barba was drunk -  _ very  _ drunk, from the looks of it - and showing up at his daughter's preschool after six on a Friday. Nothing good could come from that.  

“Mr. Carisi,” Rafael slurred. He held out a hand but didn’t look up. Sonny rolled his eyes and took it, spreading his legs and bracing his stance as he pulled the other man unsteadily to his feet. “Just the man I was looking for.” Sonny was glad that the setting sun was behind him, backlighting him and keeping the blush on his cheeks invisible for the time being.

“Well, you almost didn’t find me. I was just closing the building.”

“Closing the...right…” Rafael’s eyes focused as he looked at the building behind Sonny, like he was realizing for the first time where the cab had actually dropped him. “It’s…” he flicked out a wrist to get a look at his watch, and only had to try two more times before actually succeeding. “...almost six thirty.”

Sonny nodded and gripped Rafael’s elbow, steering him down the sidewalk and around the corner of the building, towards the parking lot and the waiting Vic. “It sure is, Mr. Barba. Seems a little early to be this deep in your cups, even for you.” Sonny opened the passenger side door and Rafael half-slid, half-fell into the front seat, his arms folding and coming to rest on the dashboard, cradling his head. 

Sonny left the door cracked, just in case - years of experience playing DD had taught him more than one lesson about how quickly someone could vomit in your car - and said a quick prayer, crossing himself briefly before snapping open the driver’s side door and sitting next to Rafael. His car was a boat, but it had never felt so small. 

He put the keys in the ignition, but didn’t start the car. He alternated between studying his nail beds and casting sidelong glances at Rafael, who had gone so still and so quiet Sonny feared for a moment that he’d fallen asleep. His voice seemed too loud in the silence of the car. “We missed seeing Daniela this week. I hope she’s feeling okay.”

“She’s on vacation with her mother,” Rafael said after a long pause. He rolled his head to the side and looked at Sonny with red, watery eyes. “I was supposed to call Olivia on Monday and tell her, but I forgot until…”

“Until tonight,” Sonny finished for him, icily. Rafael nodded and groaned again, rolling his forehead back onto his forearms. Sonny shook his head and started the car. 

“Well, Olivia isn’t here. Obviously. It’s a bit late now anyway, but let me drive you home. Or, at least, back to your office.”

Rafael waved his hand and sat up, wavering until he closed his eyes again and let his head fall back against the headrest. “You don’t have to do that. The city’s-” Rafael clamped his mouth shut and shoved a fist into his lips.

“I swear to God, Barba, if you throw up in my car I will dump you on the pavement right here, right now, and I will send you the bill in the morning,” Sonny growled, reaching across the other man to push the door open more. As he sat back up, he was surprised to see that Rafael was sitting up, his eyes focused on Sonny with surprising sharpness. 

The whites of his eyes were still a watery pink, but it only seemed to make the green of his eyes brighter. His pupils were too big, eating away at the color until Sonny felt like he might fall into the blackness of it all. 

There was something there, something that it’d taken an unhealthy amount of alcohol to wash away. A softness, cornered in confusion, in sadness, in a kind of pain that echoed back to Sonny like a familiar song. Sonny opened his mouth to speak at the same time that Rafael leaned forward by an inch, placed his hand on Sonny’s knee, and closed his eyes. 

“Sonny,” his voice was liquor scratched and low, and Sonny felt like he wasn’t in control of his body anymore as the lids of his eyes dropped closed and he waited for the steady press of warm, dry lips. When a beat too many past, and Rafael still wasn’t kissing Sonny against both their better judgement, Sonny opened his eyes again. 

Rafael was bent to the side, one palm pressed against the window as the other gripped the edge of the seat with white knuckles. Sonny rocketed back up and spun the volume dial on the radio as quickly as he could, desperate to cover up the sounds of Rafael Barba throwing up what appeared to be a week’s worth of liquor into the parking lot where Sonny worked. 

With a heavy sigh through his nose, and the internal weight of one hell of a lecture on good decision making in the future, he let his gaze drift off out the window until Rafael sat back up, closed his eyes, and pulled the door shut. He nodded at Sonny without a word, let his head fall back, and Sonny put the car in reverse.

*

“I’m sorry,” Rafael said, the first words either of them had said since they’d pulled onto the highway headed back to the city. Sonny was humming along to the radio, and started when Rafael spoke.

“Oh. Um, don’t worry about it. You missed the car, so it’s all good.” 

“No,” Rafael waved his hand through the air like was searching for the words, “not for that. I’m sorry for Daniela.”

The hair on the back of Sonny’s neck stood up. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Not now. “Don’t apologize to me. It’s. It’s fine,” Sonny hoped his tone would brook no argument. However, even drunk, Rafael was like a dog with the bone.

“It’s not fine. It’s bad. I’m bad,” Rafael lamented, his voice weak and whiny. Sonny didn’t want to, but he laughed. Rafael sounded so much like one of his toddlers.

“You’re not bad,” Sonny reassured him, his voice suffused with tenderness. “You’re being bad. There is a difference.”

“I’m not one of your kids, you know,” Rafael said, the weakness shifting to petulance with surprising rapidity.

“Well, maybe you should be, if you’re a grown man still speaking like that. ‘It’s bad, I’m bad,’” Sonny mocked. “Grow up, Mr. Barba. It isn’t really about you anymore. For the last three years, it should have been all about Daniela.”

Sonny clamped his lips shut before he really let loose. His accent was thickening and he was talking more and more with his hands, a sure sign that he was about to lose it, again, on the very, very drunk passenger in his car. 

“Look, Mr. Barba, we’re gonna be back in your office in less than an hour. Just close your eyes and let’s...not.”

“No, let’s,” Rafael said, sitting his head up and twisting his body so that he was snuggled into the corner of the passenger seat, his eyes trained on Sonny. Sonny felt the weight of his gaze, and swallowed thickly. “I think there’s something you need to get straight.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” he arched an eyebrow and risked as scathing a glance as he was willing to as he changed lanes.

“It hasn’t been three years.” When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly hollow. “It’s been exactly eleven months and,” he glanced at his watch, “two and a half weeks, if it’s actually still the fifth. I’ll admit to time getting a little fuzzy recently.”

Sonny went through the motions of changing lanes again, although there wasn’t a reason to, and spent the next several minutes switching between songs on the radio until he found something without words. He cleared his throat and tried to keep his voice level. “That’s really none of my business.”

“Isn’t it? Could’ve fooled me.” He heard Rafael take a deep, shaky breath. “Look, Son-Mr. Carisi. It’s complicated, alright. But the Cliffsnotes is that Daniela’s mom didn’t much feel like informing me she existed until a little less than a year ago, at which time I decided to do what I thought was best and marry her. Which blew up, royally, about three months ago.”

“Right around the the time Daniela started,” Sonny said, mostly to himself, as his brain attempted to reassemble the puzzle pieces, to take in this new information and add it to the internal picture he’d formed of Rafael Barba. Rafael nodded.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged his shoulders and bit nervously on the edge of his thumbnail. “I’ve known Olivia a long time, and I knew Daniela would be safe there. Happy. With happy people. Happier than me.” He was babbling a bit, still not sober, and Sonny did his best to tune it out and drill down. Rafael was opening up, and Sonny knew the odds of it happening again any time soon were slim to none.

Sonny cleared his throat and spoke, his tone kinder than his words. “You know that’s bullshit, right? That’s still plenty of time.”

“I know it is,” Rafael said, and Sonny swallowed back his retort. It was the first time he’d heard Rafael take responsibility without deflecting. He didn’t speak for fear of slamming closed the doors that were slowly opening. “I didn’t ever...if I had known...she doesn’t know how to be with me. She hates it when she comes to  visit. I don’t know how to talk to her, so we don’t talk, and she spends her time eating cheerios and watching TV and asking me to call mommy.”

“She’s three,” Sonny said, not believing he had to state the obvious. “That’s not an age known for conversational skills. Don’t you ever just...play with her?”

Rafael just stared at Sonny, one eyebrow raised as he gestured to his suit, tie, and waistcoat. “What about this screams ‘man who plays’, Mr. Carisi?”

“The part where  _ you have a three year old daughter,  _ Mr. Barba,” he shot back, enunciating each word and throwing a hand into the air, the closest he could come to the exasperated walk-out he really desired. “I can’t even believe I have to spell it out like this for you. She is a  _ child _ . That means you need to do the work here. Play with her. Make stupid noises. Get out a pen and paper and let her scribble for you, for Christ’s sake.” He took a deep breath and worked to gentle his tone. “I promise. It’s not that hard, and she does love you. She wants you to be happy.”

“You can’t...how do you know?” His voice was quiet, and between the way he fiddled with the buttons of his cuffs, and chewed gently on his lower lip, Sonny felt something in his heart warm. It wasn’t quite a request for help, but they were getting closer.

“Because the only thing that gets her to stop crying at nap time is when we sing to her. In Spanish. A song she told me you taught her.” Sonny heard Rafael’s breath catch, and the unsteady rock of his exhale, alongside the loud sniff a few minutes later, let Sonny know that something had broken inside Rafael, too.

“It’s a song my Abuelita used to sing to me a long, long time ago,” he said after a few moments.

“I know. About the colors of spring. Lorena, one of our infant teachers, recognized it and taught me a little bit. It’s beautiful.”

Rafael nodded, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. 

Sonny pulled off on the exit he needed and merged into even slower city traffic. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard, briefly considering seeing if Rafael might finally be up for a meal, but one look at the man and he decided against it. The circles under his eyes were dark, and there was a dry pallor to his skin that made him look tired, worn. In need of sleep more than anything. Grumbling to himself, he pulled off to a meter, jokingly warned Barba not to boost his car, and ran into the bodega on the closest corner to Rafael’s office.

When he exited, he tossed a plastic bag into Rafael’s lap. He’d managed to navigate his phone out of his pocket, and Sonny dearly hoped he wasn’t texting anyone important, for his own sake. He slid his car into reverse and waited for a chance to pull into traffic. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Rafael said quietly, and Sonny could hear him rustling through the bag. It wasn’t much, a bottle of blue gatorade, a pack of mint gum, a few different kinds of beef jerky and candy bars. None of it seemed like the kind of fare Rafael would have picked for himself, but Sonny knew he’d covered the four basic hangover food groups - sugar, protein, electrolytes, and something to get the cotton out of his mouth when he woke up tomorrow. 

Sonny just shrugged and busied himself with looking over his shoulder, cursing New York traffic for the millionth time in his life. 

“It’s okay, Mr. Carisi. I can walk from here.”

“You’re drunk,” Sonny shot back without thinking.

“Not so much. Not anymore. Besides, I can see the door of my building from here. You can stay to watch if it makes you feel better. Thank - thank you, for the ride back to the city.”

Sonny put the car in park and gripped the steering wheel, nodding. Every nerve in his body wanted Rafael to stay in the car, wanted a few more minutes with no walls, but he wasn’t going to argue with a grown man intent on walking himself half a city block. “No problem. Maybe next time you can just shoot Olivia an email,” he strove for humor but the joke fell flat. 

Rafael paused, his hand on the door and his back to Sonny. “I would like to call you Sonny again, Mr. Carisi. If that’s alright.”

This time it was Sonny’s turn to catch a breath, his chest burning as his heart pounded in his throat. He swallowed, and Rafael waited. “There’s a Valentine’s day party next Wednesday. It’s at 11, and I’m sure you’ll be busy and it’ll be impossible to get away. But Daniela would like you to come. Let’s start there. Rafael.” He rolled the other man’s name through his mouth like velvet, and felt himself on the edge already. That was a feeling he could become addicted to.

He watched as Rafael nodded, popped open the door, and unfolded himself from the car. He turned, one hand on the roof of the car as the noises from the city behind him filtered into the space of the Crown Vic. To Sonny, it felt like the breaking of a magic spell. Rafael bent down, a smile on his face.

“I’ll see you Wednesday, Sonny.”

The door slammed, and Sonny watched as Rafael made his way across the sidewalk, through the intersection, and into the doors of 1 Hogan Place. He was still watching, minutes later, when a car finally honked for his spot and he threw a hand out the window. 

He pulled back on the highway home, and couldn’t stop himself from staring at the rearview mirror, pretending he could still see the shining glass entryway to Rafael’s office long after the lights of the city blurred together. 


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is almost entirely the fault of the Fight Garden, and I'm eternally grateful for it.

Some pairs were just meant to go together. 

Peanut butter and jelly.

Bread and butter.

Toddlers and sugar.

It was the last one that had Sonny running around the grocery store, throwing clearance shelf cookies and off-brand lollipops into his cart like he was on Supermarket Sweep.

When Olivia had told him he'd need to plan a Valentine’s Day party for his class, he had waved her off with quick reassurances that he had it fully under control. Turns out, his idea of a Valentine’s Day party for three year olds - construction paper cards for mom and dad, and a cookie a piece at morning snack - was nowhere near what the parents of St. Catherine’s were expecting. Every other class had planned a game, a craft, Valentine's exchanges, and an array of snacks large enough they called to mind something from The Food Network. 

He felt that tumbling nausea in his stomach that meant he was in danger of completely missing the mark, and off he’d fled to the grocery store, after midnight on a Tuesday, pinterest ideas swirling in his head. 

It didn’t help that Rafael had reassured him every day that week that he'd be there. 

The first Monday following Sonny’s impromptu designated driver stint, Rafael had shown up with a tentative smile on his face and Daniela’s small hand tucked in his. He’d crouched down, tucked a stray piece of Daniela’s hair behind her ear, and said something Sonny couldn’t hear before kissing her lightly on the top of the forehead.

The girl beamed. 

Sonny crossed to the doorway and took Daniela’s coat from Rafael, their hands brushing lightly underneath the thick fabric. Sonny shivered and tried to wipe the beginnings of a goofy smile off his face. “How’re we doing this morning, Ms. Daniela?”

The little girl just smiled shyly, tucking herself close to Rafael’s leg and squeezing his hand. 

“She had a good night, I guess. Her mom dropped her off this morning - she had fun on her vacation, but it’s only her second full day back, so…” Rafael trailed off and shrugged, doing his best to gently pull his hand free of the girl’s white-knuckled grip. “I’ll be picking her up the next two days. The party on Wednesday is at 11, right?”

Sonny nodded and stooped down to pick Daniela up, settling her on his hip. She looked briefly panicked, searching for Rafael, until her eyes caught sight of Margot and Lewis playing in the corner and she scrambled to be put down. Sonny chuckled and complied, her feet barely on the floor before she was dashing off for the baby dolls. Sonny caught Rafael’s eye, and that familiar heat in his gut flared when he found the other man smiling a full, true smile. Sonny cleared his throat and tried desperately to remember what Rafael had just asked him.

“Right, yeah, the party Wednesday will be at 11. It won’t be anything big, just helping the kids make a few cards, couple of games and cookies all around, but it should be fun. For the kids, especially.”

“Yeah. For the kids,” the way Rafael’s eyes traced Sonny’s face made him blush, a deep pink creeping up from beneath his neckline to the crest of his cheekbones. It was Rafael’s turn to clear his throat and chuckle awkwardly. “Well, I’ve already had Carmen clear my schedule, which means there’s at least a 75% chance I’ll actually be able to get here for the party.”

“That’s great Rafael! I know Daniela is gonna love having you there. Do you know if her mother is going to be able to come as well?”

Something dark passed over Rafael’s face, the playful glint in his eyes deadening until they were flat as stone. It was so quick, if Sonny had blinked he would’ve missed it, but as it was he wished he had. There was so much hurt and pain buried deep within that look, it was daunting to behold. Rafael shrugged a shoulder and shoved one hand in his pocket at the same time he glanced at the watch on his other wrist. “I wouldn’t know. Uh, excuse me, Sonny, but I really do have to be going if I’m going to make it to this arraignment in time.”

Sonny nodded and held up his hands. “Absolutely. You go ahead. Daniela’s going to have a great day today. I hope you do, too,” he added quietly, but Rafael was already on his way out the door, tossing a quick wave over his shoulder as he pulled the door closed behind him. 

It was a vast improvement over the drop-offs of the last several months, and something fuzzy and dangerous began to take up residence in the back of Sonny’s mind - the knowledge that Rafael was listening. To him. About his daughter. He hadn’t missed the way Rafael looked at him. But he’d already had that talk with Liv, and more so, there was that other look. That switch that flipped when Sonny had brought up his ex. It wasn’t meant to be a litmus test, but maybe it would serve as such anyway.

Sonny was a good person, but by no means a whole person. Was he ready to help Rafael spring clean his life when the cobwebs of grief and loss still lingered in his own dark corners?

Questions too big for a Monday morning, ten toddlers on the floor behind him, looking for ways to climb on shelves, rip apart books, and generally bring the most hilarious chaos to fruition throughout the universe. 

*

Wednesday morning was an even earlier one than usual, his arrival at school timed early enough that he was able to join several other staff members in stringing up balloons, streamers, foil hearts, and all manners of children’s characters bedecked in reds and pinks for the holidays. Liv had arranged for an actual chocolate fountain in the main office for the parents, and Sonny shuddered at the thought of waist-high, grabbing hands covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

He loved Liv, but sometimes it was like she’d never actually done the job before.

Still, he had a genuine smile on his face when the first set of parents walked in, just a few minutes shy of eleven, and Sonny knew he’d managed to pull it off by the skin of his teeth. The room looked great, each and every toddler was freshly changed, and he'd managed to slip into a clean shirt of his own, salmon colored with the cuffs rolled to the elbows.

For the holiday, and absolutely no other reason.

At Liv’s suggestion, he'd put room for a couple of kid/parent combs at each activity, plus a few more for the kids who didn't have adults coming. He took over cookie decorating for himself, partly because he liked it and partly because he didn't trust the kids  _ or  _ parents not to destroy his room.

As parents filtered in and the party started in earnest, the stations filled up quickly. First went the craft station, glitter and pompoms added to his original construction paper arsenal.

Next went the Duck Duck Goose, then the balloon races and the storytime chair.

In fact, by the time Rafael raced into the room at 11:20, Daniela in tow and an apologetic smile on his face, there was only one spot left open.

Dress up.

Three little boys and a little girl were crowded around a box filled with outfits, fighting over a pirate hook and firemans hat. Daniela sank next to them and said a quick hello before digging through the box for an old pair of elbow length gloves, slipping them on and joining the game.

Sonny finished up helping Patrick, saw that Katie and her mom were set with frosting, and crossed the room, crossing his arms as he came to stand next to Rafael.

“I'm glad you made it.”

“Sorry we were late. We, that is to say I, picked up a case and-”

Sonny waved a hand and clapped Rafael on the shoulder, lingering only a second to feel the heat beneath the patterned cotton. He hadn't worn his usual suit jacket, and with his sleeves rolled and waistcoat unbuttoned, he looked down right casual.

“You're here, right? That's what counts. Plus getting here late means you're stuck with dress up, so I figure you'll suffer enough.”

Rafael quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, it doesn't seem too bad. They look perfectly happy with me in a supervisory capacity.”

Sonny tilted his head and scowled slightly, unamused. “That's not exactly-”

“-Kidding. Kidding. I'd be delighted to play their pirate king or whatever.” He practically choked on the word delighted, and looked genuinely pained when he sank to the floor next to Daniela. of 

“Daddy, want an outfit?”

“Sure,” Rafael drawled, leaning back on his hands and smirking up at Sonny. 

It was almost too good when, seconds later, Daniela emerged from the dress up box with an outfit that Sonny had completely forgotten was in there, a Queen of Hearts set he’d grabbed from the “spare supplies” shelf in the staff room because nothing in their usual rotation of dress up clothes really fit the holiday. He’d shoved the black and red feather boa, bedazzled scepter with the ‘ruby’ heart, and the sparkly red tiara into the box and immediately turned his attention to fruit plates and juice boxes. 

Until right this moment, when Daniela held the plastic, red-glitter covered tiara out to her father in her left hand and the boa in her right, a hopeful grin on her face as she held them out to Rafael. 

Rafael had gone as white as a sheet, and seemed to have broken out in a cold sweat. Sonny couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy - talk about going to zero to sixty. But a completely different heartstring tugged violently as Rafael reached out, wrapped his large hand around the thin plastic, and placed it gingerly on his head. It was too small, of course, and sat too far back on his salt and pepper hair, but it didn’t matter.

Sonny thought he’d never looked better.

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning, a futile effort when Rafael leaned forward slightly to let Daniela drape the boa around his neck twice, tucking the ends in by his ears so the feather practically consumed him. Daniela giggled musically when he kissed her on the cheek, the feathers grazing her cheeks and neck. She squirmed, Rafael laughed, and Sonny had to turn heel and practically run across the room back to the cookie table, before his logical brain shut down completely. 

Luckily, there was a new batch of parents and kids, and the pink frosting was dangerously close to running out. He let his co-teacher Stephanie know he was running down the hall to the kitchen, and he ducked out, running his hand along the back of neck and taking deep breaths as he unlocked the kitchen door and slipped inside. 

He grabbed the jar of frosting from the fridge, closing it and pressing his forehead against the cool metal. He could feel the flush in his cheeks, the way his heart raced and his mouth felt dry. 

He was in so, so deep. 

He slammed a fist into the fridge and swore. There was nothing about going down that road that was a good idea. 

“That can’t have felt good.”

Sonny’s head shot up. Rafael leaned in the kitchen doorway. Sonny hadn’t locked the door behind him. 

“What are you doing here.”

“Stephanie saw how miserable I looked and thought she’d rescue me by sending me to see if you’d need help.”

“I don’t know whether to be offended or entertained by the fact that she thought I’d need help with frosting.”

“You’re the one in a fight with the refrigerator. You want to tell me who won?”

Rafael walked towards him slowly, hands in his pockets and red tiara still perched on his head. He’d lost the boa, but must have forgotten he had the ruby red headgear on in his rush to leave the room full of toddlers. 

“Ah, you know. We’re going round for round so far, but I got high hopes for coming out on top,” Sonny babbled as Rafael stalked towards him. 

He pressed his back against the refrigerator as Rafael came to lean against the island across from him. He picked up the can of frosting and eyed it warily.

“You do know how much sugar is in this, right?”

Sonny laughed and shrugged. “They’ll run it off. Plus, half of them are going home now anyway,” Sonny said with a rueful grin. Rafael chuckled and met Sonny’s eye. He popped the top on the frosting. 

The pepto pink stood out like a beacon in the kitchen, and Sonny could smell the sugar from where he stood. Rafael passed the container from one hand to the other. “Do you think this is going to be enough?”

“Should be. And if not, I got another one.” Rafael raised an eyebrow, questioning. “I like to be prepared.”

“In that case,” and before Sonny knew what was happening, Rafael scooped a dollop of bright pink, sticky-sweet frosting from the top of the can and lunged, painting the bridge and tip of Sonny’s nose with the confectionary mess..

Sonny froze, shock on his face as Rafael leaned back and grinned, admiring his handwork, green eyes bright. Sonny exhaled in a noise that was half gasp, half laugh, and shook his head slowly. “I. Cannot. Believe. You just did that. You do know I’m at work, right?”

Rafael shrugged. “So?”

“So,” Sonny dove, but a half-second too slow, and he almost crashed into Rafael as he reached for the can of icing. Rafael had stretched his arm as far as he could behind him, leaning further and further back as Sonny stretched his long arms forward, legs on either side of Rafael’s, his body a warm, constant presence against the other man’s. They laughed harder than the toddlers next door as they both twisted and turned in an effort to keep - or, in Sonny’s case, gain - control of the hostile territory that was the pink frosting. 

At last, Sonny’s height got him the literal upper hand and he wrested the can of pink frosting away from Rafael, raising it above the other man’s head and shouting a triumphant “ha!”

“You wouldn’t dare, Mr. Carisi,” Rafael warned, his eyes playful even as his tone wrapped low and rough around the professional courtesy they’d already so comfortably left behind. Sonny’s laughter slowed as the full awareness of their situation came back to him. 

“That does look like a very expensive suit, Mr. Barba. It would be a shame to ruin it,” he said innocently, using his long finger to scoop the smallest dollop of frosting from the can. “However, we try to teach fairness and justice here at St. Catherine’s.”

He moved his hand towards Rafael’s cheek, but Rafael caught his wrist in a firm grip, his eyes smouldering. “Don’t,” was all he said, but Sonny saw the way he licked his lips, the way his eyes followed Sonny’s tongue as his reflexively wet his lips in kind. With a movement so small, Sonny wondered if maybe he dreamed it, Rafael dipped his head forward, and Sonny stretched.

Rafael’s lips wrapped around Sonny’s fingers and sucked lightly, the warm scratch of his tongue across the pad of his finger. He shivered when Rafael’s tongue wrapped circles around the tip of Sonny’s finger and his teeth teased gently at his nail. He stifled back a groan when Rafael sucked his finger down to the last knuckle and looked up at him through heavy eyelids. 

And when Rafael didn’t bother to stifle the smallest moan of his own, Sonny knew he was done.

“Fuck it,” he growled, ripping his finger out of Rafael’s mouth with a pop and grabbing him by the back of the neck, his fingers coming to rest on a pulse point. Both of their hearts were racing. 

Sonny took one final breath in the life that existed before kissing Rafael Barba, and then his lips were on Rafael’s, warm hungry and pressing. 

He licked tentatively at Rafael’s lower lip, teasing it gently between his teeth before licking into Rafael’s mouth. Rafael moaned and opened beneath him, his hands dropping to Sonny’s hips and pulling him more firmly against him. Sonny moaned and felt Rafael’s cock twitch in response. The kiss grew more hungry, Sonny pressing his weight into Rafael as his hands twined through his hair, sucking gently first on Rafael’s top lip, then the bottom. His cock ached when Rafael broke the kiss to bite lightly along his jaw, and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done to break their moment.

He wanted to bend Rafael over the island and show him just what it meant to be hot for teacher.

Instead, he pressed his hands into Rafael’s shoulders and pushed himself back against the refrigerator, returning them to their beginning postures.

“Rafi-Rafael. We can’t. Not-not here. Not now. I’m at work.”

“Say it again.”

Sonny’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Rafi. Say it again.”

“Rafi? What, like a nickname?”

“Yeah. I like the way you say it,” Rafael grinned at him wickedly and Sonny groaned, pounding his head against the refrigerator. Even it’s cold metal wasn’t enough to cool the literal fire running underneath his skin. 

“Rafi. We can’t, okay? Not here.”

“Not here. But...somewhere?”

Sonny looked around them, realizing with every passing second how lucky they’d been that no one had come looking for them yet. “Yes. Definitely somewhere. Look. Why don’t you go ahead and take this can back to the room, tell Stephanie it got lost in the fridge somehow.” The lie sounded thin, even to his own ears. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Sonny grabbed the last can of frosting from the fridge and passed it to Rafael.

“Sounds good.” Rafael gave him the smallest salute and a wink, taking a step towards the door before pivoting quickly and pressing a soft kiss to the corner of Sonny’s mouth. “I’ll call you tonight and we’ll figure the next part out, okay?”

Sonny nodded and smiled, giving Rafael a little ‘shoo’ wave. He waited until Rafael was out of the kitchen, watched the two slowest minute of his life pass on the clock, and then made his way back to the room.

As predicted, over half the students had gone home with their parents for the day, Daniela and Rafael hot on their heels. Daniela pointed and giggled as Rafael ushed her out the door, a  goodbye wave all either of the two men could handle at the moment, but Sonny figured it was just the normal toddler giggles.

Until Stephanie saw him and immediately cracked up, too.

“What?”

“Mr. Barba wasn’t kidding about the frosting explosion, huh?”

“Frosting explosion?”

Stephanie looked at him confused. “Yeah. Mr. Barba said that’s what took you both so long - one of the jars of frosting exploded?”

Sonny’s laugh was genuine, even as he was impressed at the lie. “Oh, yeah. I just. It wasn’t really an explosion so much as me, dropping a jar on the counter hard enough to break. Mr. Barba was just being kind, helping me clean up and all.”

“Yeah, well. If he helped you clean, he missed a spot.” There was no way for her to know, and Sonny still felt his heart skip several beats.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ve got frosting all over your nose still.”


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really, really hoping to have this all done by the end of the week, friends!
> 
> I had to cut this where I did or it would have been 8K all on its own. That being said, see point A above ;)
> 
> This chapter is for barbaxcarisi, for a very certain moment, because I will never not think of them and I hope they know it when they see it.
> 
> Don't forget that writers live and drink on the kudos/comments tip jar!

When Rafael called later that night, Sonny almost didn’t pick up. Not because he didn’t want to. It was just. He’d left his phone on the dresser all the way across his bedroom, and he was right on that perfect borderline between sleep and awake, and he was so tired, and and and

He pulled himself off the bed and across the room, barely hitting the green ‘accept call’ button before it disappeared and sent the call to voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Hey.” Sonny could hear Rafael’s smile through the phone. “Sorry I’m calling so late.”

“Nah, it’s alright. I was just…” Sonny’s voice trailed off as he blanked on exactly what it was he’d been planning to do next. Something about a shower? At the moment, all Sonny wanted to do was lay back down.

“...just? You alright, Sonny?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. It was an early morning with the party and all. I’m just tired.”

“I’ll keep it quick then,” Rafael said, legitimate note of apology in his voice. Something pinged in Sonny’s chest, and he didn’t want it to be quick. He almost argued the point, until he realized he’d be completely contradicting himself. “I wanted to see what you were doing this Friday evening?”

“Time for another status report,” Sonny ribbed, and Rafael laughed.

“No, not this time. At least, not fully, although I wouldn’t say no to hearing more about how it was that I was the only parent who ended up in a ridiculous costume today. Actually, I was hoping maybe you’d want to go out with me?”

“Sure,” Sonny said, his voice casual as his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. Sure, they’d just risked Sonny’s job and Rafael’s fatherly good name by making out at Sonny's job. But that wasn’t a date. Sonny hadn’t really been on a date in. Well. Since before his dad. “Dinner? Drinks?”

“Something a little different this time, I’m afraid. It’s a friend of mine. He’s giving a lecture at Fordham this Friday and I was thinking there isn’t anybody else I’d rather take.”

Friday. Fordham. One full day to wait, and then back to the campus he’d left at the end of the semester with the heavy knowledge that he most likely wouldn’t be back. He rubbed a hand through his hair and sighed. 

Rafael must have heard, and when he spoke again, the teasing was gone and he sounded far less sure of himself. “If you don’t want to, we can always stick to your original dinner/drinks pitch. It’s a classic, right? Sonny?”

“I’m okay, Rafael. I’d love to.” And he really would. He’d have the next day or so to work through his shit about going back to campus, but it would be worth it. He liked Rafael, and it was a losing battle to try and keep convincing himself otherwise. “Who’s your friend? What’s the lecture?”

“Let me have a little mystery. If you’re sure you want to go?” Conscientious empathy wasn’t exactly Rafael’s strong spot, Sonny knew, and if he was nervous enough to question Sonny’s first assurances, he was possibly even more nervous than Sonny was. 

“I’m sure. In fact, I’m more than sure. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I’ll pick you up this time, yeah? Seems only fair, given how many times you’ve had to come in to the city on my behalf.”

“You wanna drive all the way out here to pick me up, and then drive all the way back to the city to go to the lecture?” Sonny’s practical Italian father whispered in the back of his skull, calculating miles and the price of gas and a million other factors that weighed against Sonny’s worthiness. 

Rafael chuckled, an edge in his voice. “Damn it, Sonny. You really can’t just leave it alone?”

Sonny blushed and grinned to no one. “Alright, alright. Fair enough. I’ll see you Friday, Rafael. What time?”

“The lecture starts at eight, and we should be done in plenty of time for dinner, and if you’re lucky maybe even a round of drinks.”

“Luck favors the brave, Rafi. I’ll see you here at...6:30?”

“It’s a date, Sonny. And hey - today was really great.”

Sonny couldn't help grin, his voice soft when he replied, “Yeah. It was. Good night, Rafael.”

Rafael turned his goodnight and hung up. Sonny set his phone back on the charger and exhaled shakily.

He had a date. In about 36 hours. He turned towards his pitifully empty closet and groaned, grabbing an empty laundry basket and frantically piling clothes inside it. He had nothing to wear, and given the source material, that wasn’t exactly starting from a very high bar.

*

Thursday did that weird thing where it seemed to pass in both no time at all, while simultaneously dragging by so slowly, Sonny thought the day was never going to end. They finger painted, and did their Very Hungry Caterpillar storytime, and by the time he’d finally gotten Jacob and Wayne to stop talking long enough to sleep, he was stuck in the loop of trying to talk himself both into, and out of, his date with Rafael.

It wasn’t hard to come up with reasons not to. His job was a big one, and since he and Liv had already had that conversation, he couldn’t even plead innocence via ignorance. There was also the little matter of the fact that Rafael was incapable of hearing about Daniela’s mother without shutting down completely. 

Which may not have been fair, given that Sonny hadn’t managed to say his dad’s name out loud in the last several months, but it was still the reality of their situation. Added to that was all the ‘normal’ panic over the fact that Sonny hadn’t gone on a date in longer than he’d like to admit, and that had been with a woman. He hadn’t gone out with a man since he was an undergrad, and that had felt so much more like something small, and fun, and light. 

This felt different. Heavier. Grown-up. Like if Sonny actually took that step forward, he and Rafael would have a hill to climb ahead of them. It was...not off-putting, but certainly unfamiliar to Sonny. He’d made his life out of flirty dimples and quick exits. And then there was Daniela. She’d had so many people in and out of her life already. 

Sonny spent the entirety of Thursday night wired so badly he didn’t sleep, tossing and turning until the sheets were tangled around his ankles and every part of his body that touched the mattress seemed to sweat. He got up a few hours before dawn, showered, and resigned himself to looking exhausted on his date with Rafael.

After his first two coffees of the day, Sonny felt closer to something resembling human, and he strolled in to his classroom fifteen minutes before the building opened. The hallways were still dark, a thin band of light around Liv’s office door the only sign that there was anyone else in the building. 

“Hey, Liv,” Sonny said, leaning his tall frame against the doorway.

“Morning, Sonny. How was the party yesterday?”

“Great! Looks like Tucker was able to get most of the handprints off the walls?”

Liv laughed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, he’s coming back today to get the rest of it.”

“You know, it’s probably unprofessional to say ‘I told you so’,” Sonny let the thought trail off as he quirked an eyebrow and smirked at Olivia, who laughed and threw her hands up.

“Hey, you were right. Next year, no chocolate fountain. In fact, no chocolate fountain ever again. But EPK had fun?”

“Oh, yeah. Cookies, games, dress-up, the whole nine yards. The kids had a blast.”

“It looked like it when I peeked in the window! One day, you’ll have to tell me how you managed to get Rafael Barba into a crown and boa.”

Sonny’s stomach sank at hearing Olivia talking about yesterday, a post-fact reminder of just how stupid it’d had been for them to do what they did. Even if what they’d done had been, well, among Sonny’s top seven best life moments. Sonny cleared his throat and realized he’d been silent for a few seconds too long, and now was most likely blushing on top of it. He cleared his throat and shrugged, an anxious chuckle filling the silence. “That was all Daniela. That girl could get him to steal the moon.”

“So that’s going better?”

“Yeah? I think so. Seems to be. Drop offs are better, for sure, and he’s been easier to get in touch with.” Liv nodded, but didn’t say anything, and kept staring at Sonny like there was something on his face. He rocked back and forth on his heels a few times before nodding. “Right. Well. Have a good morning Liv.”

“You too, Sonny. Happy Friday.”

“Happy Friday!” He called over his shoulder, already on his way back down the hallway to his own classroom. He flipped on the lights, double checked that he had all the paperwork ready to go, and spent the next eight hours trying his best not to look at his watch every two minutes. Luckily, the weather was unseasonably warm for February and they were able to spend the bulk of the day outside on the playground. 

Sonny practically ran out of the building at four, which meant he was showered, dressed, and redressed when he realized he hated the first outfit, all with over an hour to spare before Rafael arrived. He tried to read, tried to get a jump on lesson plans for the following week, and in the end just poked around on his Apple watch mindlessly until he heard the buzz for his apartment. 

Sonny’s heart stopped and he wiped his sweaty palms down the front of his dark wash jeans. He pressed the buzzer and paced as much as he could in the sparse square footage of his apartment’s entryway. When the knock sounded, his heart fell out of rhythm to match it. He swallowed thickly and crossed himself out of habit before slowly opening the door and sliding his most charming grin into place, dimples on eleven. 

“Jesus Christ, don’t you look like a fucking toothpaste commercial.”

“Bella! Gina! What are you guys doing here?!”

Sonny had been prepared for a lot of things when he opened the door, but not for the overwhelming presence of two of his three sisters demanding to be let in to his apartment.

“What, you don’t want to see your sisters?”

“We come all this way and that’s the greeting we get from our brother?”

Sonny’s shoulder slumped, but he smiled. “All this way, Bell? What’s it, ten minutes from Ma’s house to here? Come on, come on, come in. I got neighbors.” Sonny stepped back and let them into his apartment, secretly cursing the universe and praying, for the first time in his life, that a date was actually late. 

Once they were all in the by-degrees more spacious living room, Sonny gave each of them a hug and a kiss on the temple before asking again, “Seriously, guys. What’re you doing here?”

Bella and Gina looked back and forth conspiratorially, each nodding at Sonny, prompting the other to speak first. “Guys! I’m right here! You’re scaring me, someone just tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s...it’s Teresa. We need your help.”

“No. No! I told you guys on Sunday, I’m not getting involved in whatever hairbrained scheme this is you two have to meddled again in Teresa’s life. She’s an adult.”

“But,” Bella began, and Gina had just opened her mouth to join in the conversation when Sonny’s buzzer cut through the apartment again. All three froze, and Sonny swore.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s a Friday night, who’s coming by on a Friday night?”

“I’ve got friends, you know.”

“No you don’t,” they spoke at the same time, something they’d done since they were little - all three Carisi sisters did - and it hadn’t gotten less eerie as they’d aged. 

“So who is it,” Bella asked as the buzzer rang again. Sonny just glared at her as he crossed to the button and jabbed it with his thumb.

“None of your business. Now both of you - out.”

“Aw, come on! You’re gonna kick your baby sister to the curb?”

“No, I’m going out and I’m not letting either of my sisters stay in my apartment without me. Don’t think I don’t remember you three going through my room.”

“That was a decade ago, Sonny,” Gina said as Sonny ushered them towards the door, his mind racing to navigate what was about to an incredibly awkward meeting. 

“And it wasn’t fair that you got your own room just because you’re a boy,” Bella muttered from behind them, and Sonny couldn’t help but smile and wink back at her. Sometimes it was just too damn fun, being the little brother. 

His smile evaporated quickly when a series of quick knocks on the door sounded just as he was reaching for the knob. He froze and Gina gave an evil little laugh as she poked him in the ribs.

“Ma taught you better than to leave company waiting, Dominick,” Bella teased, using his formal name like they only did when he was in trouble. “Better open the door.”

He whirled on his heel and glared at both of them. “I swear on Nonna’s ghost, if either of you fuck this up for me I will kill you twice and spit on your ashes, do you understand me?”

Gina nodded and Bella crossed her hands in front of her like a choir girl, but Sonny didn't miss the look that passed between them. His fists clenched and he did his best to make his smile as painless as possible as he opened the door.

Rafael looked stunning. A dusty pink dress shirt pulled flatteringly across his broad chest, dark maroon tie bringing out the copper of his tan. He'd gone without the waistcoat, but with a pair of suspenders Sonny was longing to slip off his shoulders, and a suit coat draped over one arm, he still managed to look like the most delicious human being Sonny had ever seen. 

His fingers itched to touch, and his throat was so dry he almost choked when he swallowed.

Sonny's reverie was broken when Gina let out a long, low whistle and Bella cursed appreciatively. He blushed, embarrassed, at the same time that a spike of jealousy shot along his spine, cold and metallic in the back of his throat.

Mine. The single word echoed in his mind.

“Hey,” Rafael finally said, his gaze locked firmly on Sonny, even as Bella and Gina crowded closer behind him. 

“Hey,” Sonny replied, his eyes full of apology.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Bella and Gina just couldn't help themselves, and Sonny's blush turned a deeper pink than Rafael’s shirt. “Rafael Barba, my sisters Bella and Gina.” Sonny cocked his head in either direction, indicating which of the two blondes was which, and Rafael's grin grew.

“Nice to meet you both.”

“They were just leaving.”

“We were?”

“Yes, Bella, we were, remember? Sonny promised to help us with Teresa, and clearly has better people- er, um-things to do right now. So we'll go, and see you this Sunday at dinner, yeah?”

She glared up at him with manufactured innocence. He would kill her for the ‘slip', and it was the clunkiest attempt at blackmail she'd ever roped him in to. But it was also his quickest chance at a smoothish escape, and he jumped at it.

“Absolutely,” he replied, shooting daggers at both of his sisters as they patted him on the shoulder and slid between he and Rafael. 

“So nice to meet you, Mr. Barba,” Bella tittered over her shoulder as Gina pulled her by the elbow down the hall to the elevators. They didn’t even have the common decency to wait for the doors to close completely before they dissolved in laughter and squeals of ‘he’s so cute!’. 

Sonny felt like he was sixteen all over again, and he wanted to melt through the floor. Luckily for him, Rafael seemed more endeared than alarmed at the situation. 

“They seem lovely,” Rafael deadpanned as Sonny grabbed his leather jacket off the hook and pulled the door shut behind him. He didn’t look nearly as formal as Rafael did, but in his dark wash jeans, faded Fordham law tshirt, and forest green plaid, he felt good. With the leather jacket and black beanie to guard against the February chill, Sonny didn’t miss the way Rafael looked at him when he turned to lock his door. Like Rafael was dying of thirst, and Sonny was a tall vanilla milkshake, straw and all. 

“They’re menaces, all three of them,” Sonny glowered, but there was no real malice behind the words. 

“But you love them,” Rafael said.

“Of course I do. They’re my sisters.”

“Don’t have any,” Rafael said casually as they rode the elevator down to the lobby. “But I did have a whole building full of nosy neighbors and pseudo-grandmothers, so I can only imagine.”

The barest detail about his childhood, and Sonny realized how little he really knew about Rafael. Including the fact that, apparently, when he drove he was behind the wheel of a cherry red Shelby GT350 Ford Mustang.

Sonny stopped dead so quickly that Rafael, just a few steps behind, crashed into his back with a grunt. 

“I know, right,” Rafael said. “Sadly, it’s not mine. I borrowed it from a friend - and no, not the same friend we’re going to see speak, so still no hints Carisi.” He placed his palm flat between Sonny’s shoulder blades and steered him gently to the passenger side of the car, opening his door and helping to Sonny slide onto the smooth black leather seat. 

For the few seconds he was alone while Rafael walked around the outside of the car, Sonny took a deep breath and tried to commit this exact moment to memory for the rest of his life. “Shall we?” Rafael slid the key into the ignition and Sonny shivered as the powerful engine rumbled to life beneath them. 

Rafael slid easily into traffic and turned the radio down, something low and jazzy settling underneath their conversation.

“This car is amazing,” Sonny finally managed to say.

“I like to impress. Especially when I feel like I have some wrongs to right.” He reached out one hand and gripped Sonny's, giving it a gentle squeeze before returning it to the wheel. “Thank you for coming with me tonight, Sonny.”

“Thank you inviting me, Rafael. So. Where are we going?”

Rafael laughed and shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Not a word.”

Sonny laughed and settled back on the leather seat, warm now from the heat of his body. He forced himself look out the window and count to 100 before he was allowed to look at Rafael again. And still, every time he did, his heart beat a little faster.

They made small talk about his job, the weather, Sonny's students, before Rafael asked him if he'd been following the recent federal court ruling on gerrymandering, and Sonny perked up. He mentioned Benisek v Lamone, and he could tell Rafael was impressed. He'd only had a year at Fordham, but he'd loved the law for a long time.

By the time they pulled into the public parking lot across from the lecture hall, the sun had long set and the temperature had dropped even further.

Which is why Sonny yelped when Rafael ripped his beanie off and tossed it in the back seat. He glared. “It's freezing.”

“People are going to think I'm the aging lawyer banging the hot law student.”

“Well aren't you confident,” Sonny quipped back, although the pink in his cheeks had little to do with the cold. Rafael shrugged and ruffled Sonny's hair, trying and failing to get the cowlick to behave. After a second, Sonny dipped his head. “Hey. The hair’s gonna do what the hair’s gonna do. Just let it go.”

Rafael harumphed like he found that answer a unacceptable, but he took his hand out of Sonny's hair and turned to open the car door. Sonny put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Rafael turned to look at him, and Sonny leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on the corner of Rafael’s mouth.

“For the record, I would be honored to be the law student lucky enough to score the hottest ADA in Manhattan.”

Rafael smiled and reached for Sonny,slipping a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him close. He exhaled, warm against the shell of Sonny's ear before he nipped playfully at Sonny's earlobe. “Promise, I'll keep your ears warm.”

Sonny hummed and ran his hand along Rafael's forearm, dipping his fingers along the valley of the vein he'd fantasized about all those months ago. He felt Rafael shiver, and even after all this way he felt sorely tempted to suggest they skip the lecture and stay in the car instead.

Of course, as soon as the thought flashed through his mind, Rafael pulled away. He smiled at Sonny, eyes a magical shade of jade in the blue lights from the center console. 

“Come on.” His voice was rough. “I'm not done impressing you yet.”


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hit a wall with this one, friends, and I couldn't be more thankful to Power-Bottom-Barba for coming to my rescue. All the best parts of this chapter belong to them, and moreso, they helped talk me through the rest of this story in a way that made it infinitely better. 
> 
> I wake up every day amazed that I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by such amazingly talented people who don't mind putting up with my nonsense. So my eternal love, always, to the Fight Garden.
> 
> Also, to all of you fellow obscene vein fans: this one is for you.
> 
> Standard disclaimer, and feel free to toss any spare comments/kudos to your fic authors!

The minute the doors clicked shut behind them, Sonny knew exactly what they were doing. He stopped short again, even faster than he had with the Mustang. Luckily Rafael had learned his lesson and swerved around him at the last minute. Sonny gulped.

“You're friends with Bayard Ellis?”

“I'm not sure he'd put it that way, but yes,” Rafael said in that self deprecating tone he was fluent in.

Bayard Ellis grinned at them from large banners on either side of the door, clutching his new book about his early years working for the Innocence Project. Sonny had been a fan of the lawyer since he was in undergrad, taking down his Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain posters to replace with magazine covers and newspaper clippings of the man's work. Fighting for justice, for the wrongly convicted - it was the iteration of law that got his blood running fastest.

It was what he'd wanted to do with his life before his dad died.

Before he could stop them, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes and his breath shook on the exhale. Rafael's hand gripped his arm just above the elbow, squeezing gently.

“Hey, you alright?”

Sonny sniffed and wiped at his face. “Yeah, I'm fine. It's just, I shoulda known you'd be friends with someone like Bayard Ellis.

Rafael smirked and exhaled in a half chuckle before leaning close to whisper in his ear. “Say the word and we're back in the car.”

Sonny shook his head violently. “Absolutely not. This is - I’m fine, Rafi. Really.”

Rafael stared at Sonny intently, searching his face for some kind of truth that apparently wasn’t contained in his words. Whatever he was looking for, as soon as he found it, he gave a single brusque nod and slipped his hand into Sonny’s. “Then let’s go listen to Bayard lecture. It’s his favorite thing to do.”

Favorite or not, Bayard was a fantastic speaker, and Sonny lost himself almost as soon as he sat down. The man’s speaking voice was hypnotic, and as he spoke about his early days investigating and overturning wrongful convictions, about the weaknesses and flaws and inherent vulnerabilities in the law, and the ways in which future lawyers could do right by past victims of all ilks, Sonny found himself enraptured.

For a man made of kinetic energy and movement, he didn’t move for the entire hour and fifteen minutes. When the lights went up and the floor was opened to questions, Sonny’s hand shot into the air. He wanted to know how things had worked out for the daughter in the Derek Thompson case - it was the last case of Ellis’ he’d been following, and the final verdict had come back after he’d left Fordham.

The question sparked a conversation about establishing motive in a long-past timeline, the importance of chain of custody when overturning cases, and about a dozen other topics that Sonny raced to keep up with. He’d leaned forward in his chair and dropped Rafael’s hand some time ago, and it wasn’t until the moderator announced that time was up and they’d need to end the event that Sonny leaned back, ran a hand through his hair, and beamed at Rafael.

“Bayard is amazing.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“I thought you said you and Bayard aren’t friends?”

“I wasn’t thinking about him.” Rafael turned his head to stare at Sonny, eyes intense and half smile on his full lips.

And then the son of a bitch actually winked at him before standing and grabbing Sonny’s jacket off the back of his chair, holding it for him. Sonny just stared at him for a second, willing his knees to turn from liquid to solid before he joined Rafael in standing and slipping his long arms into the sleeves. He settled the coat onto Sonny’s shoulders and squeezed gently. “So, should we go say hello to Bayard and then go get that drink we talked about?”

Sonny felt all the blood drain from his face. “I can’t.”

Rafael looked at him and choked on a laugh. “Oh my god. Sonny. Breathe.”

“We can’t just go  _ say hello  _ to Bayard Ellis. He’s  _ Bayard Ellis _ .”

“A fact I’m sure he’s very well aware of. I’ll tell you what. You wait here, I’ll go say hi, and then we’ll go get drinks.” Rafael threw his own coat over his arm and began to stroll away, not looking back. Sonny watched him go for a few long seconds before shaking his head, stomping down his anxiety, and taking extra long strides to catch up with Rafael.

“Bayard! Wonderful presentation, as always,” Rafael said as they approached the man, the crowd around him slowly thinning as people walked away with signed books and huge smiles.

“That’s quite the compliment coming from Fordham Law’s most popular guest speaker three years running.”

“And five years past,” Rafael said good naturedly as he and Bayard embraced, a quick pat on the back before Rafael was back at Sonny’s side, intertwining their fingers together. “Bayard, I want you to meet someone. This is Dominick Carisi, Jr.”

“Call me Sonny,” he said without thinking, and then wanted to kick himself. “I mean, if you’d like. That is, if you were gonna call me something.” He could feel Rafael’s hand shaking with silent laughter, and even Bayard looked like he was on the end of cracking up, if such a man could ever be said to crack up. He took a deep breath and stuck out his hand. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Mr. Ellis. You were brilliant tonight.”

“Thank you, Sonny,” and Bayard shared a glance with Rafael. “I really enjoyed the conversation your question sparked, so perhaps I should return the compliment.”

“That’s really not, I mean, I didn’t. I just have always been so in love with you - your work, the work you do. It’s what I used to want to do.”

“Used to?”

Sonny shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Yeah, you know, when I was just starting out at Fordham.”

“Sonny’s taking a break from being a 1L at Fordham Law,” Rafael interjected.

“Well I wish you luck when you get back to it, Sonny. From what I saw today, you’ve got a legal mind in that head of yours. Maybe one day I’ll get to see it in action in a more formal setting.” And with that, he shook both of their hands, promised to look Rafael up for a drink the next time he was in the city with time to spare, and was off to circulate among the few lingering groups of attendees scattered throughout the lecture hall. 

“You impressed him,” Rafael said as the two made their way back to the car. “That’s no easy feat.”

“No shit?” Sonny glanced over his shoulder at the glowing windows of the lecture hall. “He’s just as much of a genius in person as he is in writing.”

“You know, a lesser person might get jealous over just how smitten you’ve been with another man for the entirety of our first date.”

Sonny looped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, pressing a soft kiss to his temple. “I’m sorry, Rafael. You’re right. This was amazing. Forgive me?”

“Feed me?” He looked up at Sonny, green eyes teasing although his voice was serious. 

“I think I can do that.”

“What sounds good?”

“My turn for a surprise. Let me drive?” Rafael looked at him disbelievingly. “It won’t be much of a surprise if I have to give you directions,” Sonny prodded. Rafael fished the keys out of his pocket and held them warily towards Sonny before snatching them back.

“You do know how to drive, right?”

Sonny reached forward and plucked the keys of out Rafael’s hands. “Get in,” he said, gesturing towards the drivers side, “and I’ll tell you all about the summer I was 15 and my dad and I restored a Crown Vic from the frame up.”

Rafael rolled his eyes as he slid into the Mustang.

“What?!” Sonny asked, defensive laughter in his voice.

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just. Of  _ course  _ you used to drive a Crown Vic.”

“Hey. No one mocks Christine. No one.”

At that, Rafael groaned. “And you named it after a demonic car?! How in the world did we end up here, Mr. Carisi?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Barba,” Sonny smirked as he put the car into reverse and backed out smoothly. “But I’m sure glad we both did.”

**

“Admit it.”

“I won’t.”

“You have to. You promised.”

“Only under duress. I was starving.” Sonny just glared at him until Rafael heaved the most put-upon sigh and tossed the spoon back into the empty glass. Rafael stared back, and a few silent seconds passed until Rafael crossed his arms. “Fine.” He took a deep breath, as though preparing to give his final confession, and then: “your milkshake, Sonny, would bring all the boys to the yard.”

Sonny whooped and slammed an open hand down on the table. “Told you so! I still can’t believe you haven’t heard that song! Everyone’s heard that song.”

“Apparently not everyone,” Barba shot back, and Sonny blushed and shrugged. 

“Lucky you.” Sonny busied his hands with clearing away the glasses and spoons on the table in front of them, adding them to the blender and scoop already soaking in the sink. He hadn’t had occasion to make his dad’s old milkshake recipe in longer than he could remember, but he was feeling in the mood that night and Rafael had humored him. 

And Sonny was glad he had, because milkshakes weren’t the only thing Sonny was in the mood for anymore. 

He crossed back to the breakfast bar and leaned over it, bracing his weight on his elbows as he leaned forward and gave Rafael a long, slow kiss. When he pulled away, his eyes were as sparkling as the other man’s were hazy. He smiled lazily at Rafael, whose eyes were still hungrily tracing the outline of his lips. 

Whose eyes tracked his movements like a lion with the gazelle as Sonny walked around the counter and situated himself firmly between Rafael's legs, hands on his chest and hips pressing forward. “Thank you for tonight,” he said for the millionth time, his long fingers slowly working free the buttons on Rafael’s shirt.

“Thank you for coming. I was a bit surprised you said yes,” Rafael’s voice was low as he watched Sonny’s hands work, his own broad palms coming to rest on each of Sonny’s hips, his thumbs lazily tracing the cuts of Sonny’s hip muscles through the dense fabric of his jeans. The slightest bit of friction, added to the warmth of the skin beneath his fingers, had Sonny’s dick starting to swell already.

“Not as surprised as I was that you asked. I thought you hated me,” Sonny said as he tugged first the right, and then the left, suspender down Rafael’s shoulders. He pulled the ends of his dress shirt out of his waistband and undid the last few buttons.

“I would have bent you over my desk the first night you came to my office, if I thought you’d let me.” The words were dirty enough, but said in a voice filled with delayed promise. They worked their way into Sonny’s core and became a part of him. 

“I would’ve let you, if you asked,” he whispered into Barba’s skin as he dropped his head and pressed a series of kisses to Rafael’s throat, starting at his adam’s apple and ending at the center of his breastbone. Rafael made a low growl in the back of his throat, and Sonny chuckled against his chest. 

Sonny sank to his knees and placed his hands on Rafael’s belt buckle, question evident in his eyes and in the way he paused. “Can I…”

Rafael nodded and ran a hand through Sonny’s hair, cupping his jaw and running a thumb along his lower lip. Sonny’s tongue darted out to flick the tip of his thumb before his hand gripped Rafael’s wrist and he pressed a gentle kiss to the skin there. He closed his eyes, inhaled the scent of Rafael Barba - something woodsy, and clean, and undoubtedly expensive - and ran his tongue along the line of vein that started at Rafael’s elbow and ended where his watch would sit.

His skin tasted like salt and heat, and Sonny felt Rafael shiver in his hands. He did it again, treating Rafael’s arm like a lollipop as he took his time exploring the exposed skin, shirt still cuffed at the elbow. He grinned and nipped at the same sensitive spot on Rafael’s wrist he’d been kissing moments before, and the sudden intake of breath from Rafael let him know he was on the right track. 

From the pulse point of his wrist to the vein that stood out in sharp relief across the back of his hand, his lips traveled, and by the time two of Rafael's long fingers were sucked deep into his mouth and brushing the back of his throat, Rafael's breathing was ragged.

“Are you a tease, Sonny?” Rafael asked, managing to sound playful despite the want in his voice.

Sonny curled his tongue around the long, tapered fingers he had so admired before drawing his head back and grinning up at the older man.

“No fucking way.”

Rafael laughed, and Sonny made fast work of Rafael's belt, the hooks of his slacks, the pull of the zipper.  There was a damp spot where Rafael was hard straining against his boxer briefs, and Sonny groaned before pulling them down off his hips.

Rafael’s prick was gorgeous, just like the rest of him.  Huge, cut, flagging heavy and flushed between his legs, glistening at the slit.  He didn't know if he'd be able to get it all down his throat, but he knew he was sure as hell going to try.

He wasn't a tease, but he couldn't help taking his time.  The taste of Rafael was salt and sex on his tongue as he swirled it around the head.  His hand wrapped around the base, he stroked him almost lazily, keeping his lips wrapped just around the top, tongue tracing the crown.

Rafael brushed his fingers through his hair, and Sonny moaned like he was the one getting his cock sucked.

“God, that's sweet,” Rafael sighed, and Sonny's dick twitched against his zipper.  “Is that what you like? You wanna be sweet for me?”

Sonny's eyelids fluttered. If Rafael kept running his mouth like that, he wouldn't be able to make this last the way he wanted.  He pulled his head back and licked again at the flushed head, teasing, light. 

“Not that sweet,” he sighed, and it was his turn to wink at Rafael before he dipped his head and swallowed him down.  His lips met the tight ring of his fist, and Rafael groaned aloud as Sonny truly started to suck him.

He gagged a little the first time his thick prick hit the back of his throat, and Rafael made a soft sound of concern, but Sonny didn't let him pull away.  He gripped his hips instead, bobbing his head back and forth, hollowing his cheeks and relaxing his throat. He wanted this, had forgotten how good it could be.  Soon his nose pressed up against Rafael's body and he swallowed. 

Rafael moaned his name, and Sonny rocked his hips for friction he couldn't find.  Rafael's hips began a slow, gentle thrust, and Sonny relaxed his throat, loving every minute of it.

Tears leaked from Sonny's eyes and saliva dripped down his chin as Rafael sank into his throat again, and again.  Sonny sucked in air greedily between the rolls of Rafael's hips, but not as greedily as he surged forward again, wanting to have the other man's thick cock heavy on his tongue, to press his nose into the thicket of dark curls.  Rafael's hands were both in his hair now, fingers raking through it as his breathing echoed raggedly around them.

“That’s right, god, that's so fucking good.”  Rafael's voice was desperate, but his fingers in Sonny's hair we're gentle. 

Sonny's hands were everywhere.  They hand roamed from Rafael's hips to his ass, as though of their own accord.  He was unable to stop himself from palming his cheeks, heavy and round in his hands, pulling them apart and groaning low around Rafael's cock as he did so.  He teased, as much as he was able, the brush of his fingers ghosting over Rafael's asshole a gentle, playful contrast to the hungry, sloppy way he sucked and bobbed his head.

Rafael rocked back against his hand, his breath shuddering like a moan, and Sonny swallowed around him.  It wasn't until he had two fingers rubbing tight, insistent circles flush against Rafael's hole that the the other man used his hands to draw Sonny back.  Those long, tapered fingers that Sonny had so admired gently cupped his jaw and tilted his head up.

“You trying to tell me something, baby?” 

Rafael's voice was low and dark, and so hot that Sonny didn't trust his own to reply.  He nodded instead, and pressed one finger forward into the ring of muscle, just one knuckle into the impossibly smooth, tight heat that was Rafael. 

Rafael moaned, and Sonny pushed in to the second knuckle.

“Yeah,” Rafael breathed, and stroked his knuckles along Sonny’s cheek. “You want to fuck me?”

“Since the first time I saw you,” Sonny answered, too honestly.  He barely recognized his own voice, wrecked from misuse of his throat.

Rafael rocked back against Sonny's hand once more before smoothing back his hair.  

“Come here,” he said, and helped Sonny to his feet once he had carefully pulled his finger from the tight heat of Rafael's ass.

Sonny let himself be pulled close, let Rafael grip the back of his neck and lick into his mouth. When the kiss finally broke, Sonny realized Rafael had drawn his pants back up, though they were still undone.

“Where is your bedroom?” he asked, and Sonny pointed to one of two doors in his tiny apartment.  

“Let me show it to you,” he grinned, and Rafael smiled in return. 

“Give me a minute, I'll meet you there.” He leaned in to kiss Sonny once more before drawing away and stepping into the restroom.  Once the door was shut Sonny ran the few steps into his bedroom, glancing around to make sure it looked alright. He kicked a pair of jeans left on the floor under his bed and out of sight, then rummaged in his nightstand to pull out a strip of condoms.

Condoms were easy, but Sonny swore as he dug through the drawer, not finding the other thing he needed.

“I've got to have fucking lube in here,” he cursed under his breath, pulling open the next drawer as his search became more frantic.  There was a pump bottle of Lubriderm sitting shamefully beside his alarm clock, but that would hardly work for this, and he knocked it into the drawer before Rafael saw it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Panic had nearly taken over when he finally found an old, half full bottle of Wet Platinum that had rolled to the back of the drawer.

“Thank you, Jesus,” he breathed a sigh of relief as he briefly clutched the bottle to his chest.

“Isn’t thanking Christ for lube a little blasphemous?” 

Sonny turned, startled.  Rafael was standing, leaning against his door and grinning. His slacks and tie were gone; he stood in only his pale pink dress shirt, buttons undone, and the boxer briefs that Sonny itched to strip back off him.  Sonny didn’t hide the way his eyes raked over his body.

“What are you, my priest?” He licked his lips, still swollen and flush from being so recently wrapped around Rafael's dick.  “Besides, look at you. I'll take the penance.”

He dropped the bottle of lube next to the condoms on his pillow.  He needed his hands to undo enough buttons on his own shirt to pull it off over his head and toss it to the floor.  It had the effect he desired; instantly Rafael swaggered across the room to him, hands sliding over his shoulders and back, dipping to kiss his mouth.

Sonny leaned into the kiss, pushing the shirt off Rafael’s shoulders and down his arms.  The smooth poplin was so finely made it felt like satin against his fingertips, but it didn't compare to the heat of Rafael's skin.  Rafael, whose nimble fingers were making quick work of Sonny's belt and zipper, and slipping under the waistband of his briefs.

“Can I take these off of you?” Rafael broke the kiss to ask, and Sonny lifted his hips to make it easier to slide the rest of his clothing down off his body as he murmured his consent.  Rafael's boxer briefs were quickly gone as well, and Sonny let himself be lost in the feel of skin on skin contact, the softness of Rafael's chest hair against his own, smoother, and the slide of their cocks together as he pulled Rafael down with him into his bed.

He rolled Rafael onto his back and slid a hand up his thigh, gently pushing up his knee, but Rafael shook his head, breathing heavy as their lips parted again.  

“Wait,” he said, and turned, rolling onto his stomach and pushing up onto his knees and elbows.  He looked back over his shoulder at Sonny. “I want it like this.”

Sonny had to grip himself at the root to fight back the surge he felt seeing Rafael in front of him like that, knees spreading further apart, arching his back to stick his ass further in the air.

“Yeah,” he said, barely more than a breath.  “Fuck, yeah, okay. You're so fucking sexy, Rafael.”

He groped for the lube and popped the cap, squeezing out more than he needed as he drizzled it onto his fingers and into the cleft of the other man's ass.  Rafael flinched at the cold but then arched up into it. He sighed, the sound low and sweet to Sonny's ears, as he slid the first finger inside him.

His used his free hand to stroke gently up and down along the pretty curve of Rafael's back, brushing his knuckles across his shoulder blades and rubbing his thumb into the dimples above his ass.  The gentleness of his touch caused Rafael to relax even more, and soon Sonny was able to press in a second finger and begin to work him open properly.

Rafael moaned, long and low, and Sonny abandoned his back to reach between his legs instead, wrapping his fingers around Rafael's neglected prick and stroking him in time with the movement of his hand.

Three fingers now, and the sweet, breathy sounds spilling from Rafael's lips were making Sonny's head spin.  Each time he twisted his wrist or curled his fingers to tap against Rafael's prostate, the older man would moan openly and rock back on his knees.  He was practically fucking himself on Sonny's hand. He didn't know how much longer he would be able to take this.

Thankfully, it seemed Rafael was of the same mind.

“I'm ready,” he gasped, and then looked back over his shoulder.  His pupils were blown, the green of his heavily lidded eyes barely visible, and his cheeks flushed bronze.  His lips were swollen and slick. Sonny didn't know if it was from the frenzy of their early kisses, or the way Rafael had been chewing at them while Sonny worked him open.

What Sonny did know was that he looked beautiful.

“I'm ready,” he said again, and his eyelids fluttered as Sonny crooked his fingers to rub slow circles against his prostate.  “Fuck,  _ fuck _ ... come on, Sonny.  Fuck me, please. I'm ready.”

As though Sonny were ever going to say no.

Carefully, he pulled his fingers from Rafael's body, even as the other man arched his back and sighed at the emptiness. He fumbled the foil packet as he ripped it open, nearly losing the condom, but managed to roll it on even as nerves made his stomach flutter.  He was always like this the first time with someone new: excited, nervous, eager to please. But it was more than usual this time, and he knew why.

He hadn't fucked a man since college, sure, but more than that.  It had been a long time since he had wanted anyone this much, man or woman.

He had known since the first time he saw Rafael Barba that he had been in trouble.  But it wasn't until now, until he had him here in his bed looking beautiful in the dim light, that he knew just how much trouble he was in.

One hand on his solid hips, Sonny used the other to guide himself to Rafael's softened hole and slowly pressed inside.  He was smooth, and tight, and hot enough to be housing a furnace. Sonny moaned, but it was nothing compared to the music of Rafael's voice as the lawyer's back arched further, slipping from being propped on his elbows to resting his chest down to the mattress, pillowing his cheek on his folded arms.

The angle was perfect, and as Sonny began to gently thrust his hips, he bowed his body forward and kissed Rafael's back, breathing the scent of him.

“Rafael,” he moaned, and rocked his hips forward. “You feel so good, god, you feel perfect, it's so good.”

“Fuck me,” Rafael sounded breathless, and too sweet to be the acerbic man Sonny had met a few short months ago.  “That's so good, fuck me baby, come on.”

Sonny groaned, straightening up and bracing his legs wider, enough to pick up the pace and power of his thrusts.  Experiential, careful with his new lover, but clearly chasing what both their bodies wanted. At once Rafael began to rock back against him, meeting each thrust just a little harder and faster than Sonny.  He was fucking himself on him, Sonny realized, and it was so hot he could have blacked out.

“I've got you,” he said, sliding one hand along Rafael's back to curl around his shoulder where it met his neck, gripping him there as he sped the motion of his hips, pulling Rafael back to meet him, the slap of their bodies meeting growing louder as his pace increased.

Sonny's fingers brushed Rafael's throat, and the older man keened, arching his neck back and leaning toward Sonny's hand with abandon.  Powerless to resist Rafael's silent request, Sonny shifted his grip, fingers loose but present as a gentle weight on Rafael's throat.

Rafael arched and gasped, pressing his ass back wantonly against Sonny now, and he couldn't help but meet him.  One hand braced on Rafael's hip, the other soft across his throat, Sonny began to really fuck him into the mattress, snapping his hips back and forth at a pace neither of them would be able to maintain.

“So fucking good, god, fuck, yes, just like that, fuck me, fuck me, that's right, god, I'm so close!” Rafael's voice cracked and Sonny could feel the ragged breathing, his throat working under his hand.

Sonny's hand left Rafael's hip, snaking around his body and gripping his thick, dripping cock, jerking him with fast strokes and expert twists of his wrist.  

“I want to make you come.  Please, Rafael, please, I want to make you come,” he begged, and the sounds Sonny fucked out of Rafael sounded almost like crying.  His body arched and shook, and he spilled through Sonny's fingers, streaks of pearl across his hand and sheets.

Sonny fucked him through it, touching him until Rafael whined with oversensitivity and pushed his hand away from his prick.  He was still pushing his ass back, and Sonny used both hands to grip them now, giving his body over to the last few rough thrusts he needed to come, flooding the condom and hoarsely gasping Rafael's name.

It was only long minutes later when they were lying side by side, bodies sweat slick and rapid breathing finally starting to calm down, that Sonny was able to roll over and strip off the condom, chucking it into his wastepaper basket.

“Let me get you something,” he breathed, pushing up on one elbow and opening his top nightstand drawer again.  “I think I have some wet wipes in here, or…” 

“Second drawer, with the hand lotion.” Rafael murmured, his eyes closed, and sounding far too pleased with himself.

Sonny stopped rustling through the drawer and turned to look at Rafael over his shoulder. His cheeks were flushed, but Rafael noticed a pink tinge to his ears that he assumed had nothing to do with the amazing sex they’d just had.

“Oh my God,” Sonny groaned, flopping back on the mattress and putting a hand over his eyes. Rafael laughed, low and deep, and Sonny reached out for a pillow, flinging it at Rafael even as his own shoulder shook in silent laughter. 

Rafael leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss to Sonny’s cheek before rolling off his side of the bed and standing up. Sonny kept his eyes closed, cementing the feeling of Rafael around him, hot and tight, into the vault of his memory, as he listened to Rafael make his way to the bathroom and grab a glass of water. 

Sonny started at the first touch of cool cloth to warm skin, but a slow smile stretched across his face as Rafael ran the washcloth over him, cleaning him slowly and tenderly. A low sound, almost like a purr, bloomed in his chest, and he forced his heavy eyelids open when Rafael stopped

The other man was up on one elbow, just looking at Sonny. There was a storm of emotions behind his eyes that Sonny couldn’t suss out, but the smile on his face and the sweetness on his lips were as real as ever. “Stay,” his accent was heavy and his voice thick with sleep.

Rafael raised a single eyebrow and quirked his mouth up in a half-smile. “You can’t get rid of me that easy, Carisi.” He handed Sonny the glass of water while he got himself cleaned up, setting the empty glass on the nightstand and tossing the washcloth into the hamper in the corner. 

He settled onto his back and pulled Sonny to him, already more than half asleep. He settled against Rafael’s side, one hand coming to settle heavily across his ribs. Rafael ran a hand lazily through Sonny’s hair, humming almost inaudibly, a song that Sonny recognized without knowing at all. Sonny slipped into sleep to Daniela’s nap time song almost as easily as the girl herself. 


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There isn't enough gratitude in the world for AHumanFemale, for the idea, and Power-Bottom-Barba for walking through the outline with me.
> 
> I'd be content to spend all my days wandering through the Fight Garden :)
> 
> This is entirely unbeta'd, and thus is entirely my fault.
> 
> Tip jar is open for kudos/comments, and standard disclaimers apply!

The next morning, Sonny's eyes popped open earlier than they had any right to. Half of it was conditioning, years of early alarms for class and work. The other half was a thrum of excitement through his blood. 

Last night had been amazing.

As gently as he could, he untangled himself from Rafael, kissing him gently on the shoulder as he mumbled his way back to sleep.

Sonny padded his way out to the kitchen, the only sound the shuffle of his feet on the wood floor and the gentle sounds of making coffee.

He poured water into the kettle for the French press and grabbed his larger espresso pot from the cabinet, measuring out grounds and water with ease. Wherever he was, Sonny took comfort in the fact that making coffee in the morning was an almost universal constant.

He was just pressing the plunger on the French press when Rafael ambled out of his room, hair askew and eyes squinted against the kitchen light. His black underwear sat low on his hips and Sonny felt a shiver of attraction run up his spine. Rafael gave a two-finger wave and a half smile, leaning against the doorway and letting his head rest against it sleepily.

“Morning,” Sonny said, holding out his own cup of coffee. The black liquid steamed invitingly and Sonny gestured to the containers of sugar and cream he'd already set on the counter, turning to grab a mug of his own.

He heard Rafael take a sip and groan appreciatively. A few more sips in between long stretches of silence and Rafael finally muttered a sleep-roughened, “Morning. Good coffee.”

“Thanks. My dad taught me.” It surprised Sonny, how casually he was able to say that, how warmly familiar and good it felt to hold the memory without the immediate stab of grief. “You're up early.”

Rafael nodded and drained his coffee cup, crossing to place it in the sink next to Sonny. “Gotta go into the office. Didn’t bring any clothes.”

“You can borrow some of mine.” Rafael glared at him, grumpy, and Sonny’s laughter was bright and clear. “Yeah, alright. You want to shower here? I’ve been told I’ve got great towels.”

Rafael shook his head, sadness and regret warring behind his eyes. “I’ll never get out of here if I do.”

“Who says that’s a bad thing?”

“Manhattan SVU and about a dozen lesser offices, unfortunately.” But Rafael leaned his weight against Sonny, a warm hand coming to rest on his knee as he kissed him, soft and deep, his mouth warm and tasting of coffee. “But thank you. Last night was amazing. I’d really like to see you again.”

Sonny smiled. “Yeah. I’d like that, too. Are you free tonight?”

Rafael’s face fell. “Unfortunately, no. I had to reschedule some things to make it to the party on Wednesday and-”

Sonny waved a hand, knocking his excuses down before they they fully took shape. “Rafael, it’s fine. I kind of assumed that weekend work was par for the course, you know? You don’t exactly have a track record of being widely available with ample free time.”

“What about Sunday?”

This time, it was Sonny’s turn to practically wince with regret. “Would you believe me if I said that I still had to go to church with my ma and then do Sunday dinner with the whole family?”

Rafael rolled his eyes and let his mouth go slack with shock surprise, a hand fluttering to his chest and a little gasp of breath escaping his lips. “You?! Well I’d never. But it's fine. We'll just have to push it to next Friday.”

Sonny pouted.

“A whole week feels like too long.”

Rafael shrugged and opened his mouth to explain when Sonny shook his head and rushed to speak first.  “No, I mean, I get it. It comes with the territory of dating a lawyer, it's just,” Sonny rubbed the back of neck. “How hard are you gonna laugh if I say that I'll miss you is all.”

Rafael cocked his head to the side and considered him seriously. “Not hard at all. But mostly because I think I might just miss you too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell anyone.” 

It was Sonny who ended up laughing, hopping off the counter and cornering Rafael against it, a hand on either side of him as he pressed forward to steal another kiss, his lips catching the other man’s lower lip between his teeth and biting hard enough that he heard Rafael hiss, and then groan against his mouth. He licked into the other man’s mouth fiercely, laying claim to Rafael, until the other man braced two wide palms against his chest and pushed gently. Sonny broke away with a grin still on his lips. 

“Alright, alright. I’m stopping.” He threw his hands up and backed to the other side of the kitchen, his back coming to rest against the pantry door, his eyes still travelling slowly up and down Rafael’s body. He was leaning on the counter and breathing heavily, his hair disheveled and his pupils blown. He licked his lips and Sonny watched the line of his throat as he swallowed.

“You’re dangerous, Carisi,” he said when he’d finally gotten his breath back, in just enough time to launch himself off the counter, cross the kitchen in two frantic strides, and tangle his fingers in Sonny’s hair, pulling the other man back down into another searing kiss. Sonny pawed at his back desperately, fingers digging into shoulders hard enough to bruise. He whimpered as Rafael moved to suck gently on his pulse point, other hand leaving his hair to rest on the side of Sonny’s neck, thumb pressing in just below his jaw. 

“Stay,” Sonny whispered again, true pleading in his voice. With a groan that bordered on painful, Rafael stopped his attention to Sonny’s neck and pressed their foreheads together, momentarily before stepping back again.

“I really,  _ really  _ can’t. Friday. I promise. I’ll call you?

Sonny nodded and used every muscle in his body to keep himself from reaching out and putting his hands back on Rafael. “Friday. Sounds good, Counselor.” He raised a hand in a brief wave, choking on a laugh as Rafael took another step back as soon as Sonny’s hand twitched. He waved back before turning on his heel and practically running for the front door. He paused, turning and giving Sonny one last wide, beaming smile before he closed the door behind him.

They were dancing around each other like teenagers, both of them matches guttering in the 

wind, inches above the gas can. The second they touched, they would explode, and whether they consumed each other in the process was anybody’s guess.

*

They settled into a routine after that first weekend. Things remained largely the same during the week, brief hellos and weighted smiles at drop-offs with Daniela, with a few more scattered texts throughout the week that had little do with with Rafael’s daughter. Every other Friday night was date night, depending on who had custody of Daniela, and on the weeks Rafael had her Friday, they would make every effort to get together on Saturdays.

It wasn’t usually easy, and more than Sonny would have preferred Rafael’s work ended up putting a stop to date night earlier than anticipated, no matter what night it was. 

But they adapted, which is how they ended up a few weeks after their initial date arguing about the movie for the evening well past 10:00 on a Saturday night, dim sum cooling on plates in front of them as Rafael grabbed the remote from Sonny’s grip and typed his own search terms into the Netflix search box.

“I’m telling you. No way are we both staying up for  _ The Way We Were.  _ Do you know how long that movie is?”

“It’s a classic! You’re telling me you can’t stay up for that final hair-brush-off-the-forehead move?” 

Rafael leaned towards him on the couch and reached out one long index finger, pressing lightly in between Sonny’s eyes before wrapping a lone section of hair around his finger and brushing it back and to the side. “I’m telling you  _ you  _ can’t stay up for the move, Sonny. What time do you have to be at Mass tomorrow?”

Sonny blushed and shrugged in a ‘so what’ kind of way, taking a long pull off the beer bottle in his hand before using it to point at the TV.

“So this is your alternative? Really?”

“What ‘really’? This movie is a classic.”

“You haven’t heard ‘Milkshake’, but you think  _ Legally Blonde  _ is a classic?”

“Underdog tale about a Harvard trained lawyer? Cultural commentary on the aesthetic of who can be a murderer? Luke Wilson? What’s not to love?” Rafael hit the play button before Sonny could pose a counterargument, and really, he didn’t hate this movie. In fact, as they settled into the weight of each other on the couch, Sonny found himself unexpectedly delighted when Rafael quoted along under his breath to the “bend and snap” and “ammonium thioglycolate” scenes. By the time the credits were rolling, both men were giving contented little sighs as Rafael explained to Sonny all the ways the movie wasn’t really anything like going to Harvard, and yet absolutely was. 

He was rambling a little, his words soft around the edges with the fourth scotch of the night in his hand. He was dressed down in rare fashion in a pair of maroon sweatpants he’d taken to stashing at Sonny’s and an old Din & Tonics t-shirt on which his name was listed among the baritones. Sonny still hadn’t convinced him to sing, but he was nothing if not persistent. 

Rafael leaned forward to grab another handful of popcorn, and Sonny slid his hand along the skin of his lower back where his shirt rode up. Rafael made an appreciative humming noise and leaned forward another half an inch. Sonny scooted closer and kissed him softly on the shoulder as his long fingers dug into the tense knots of muscle framing Rafael’s spine. He hissed and groaned, but he didn’t say stop, so Sonny didn’t. 

After a few minutes, Sonny hit a particularly painful spot and Rafael flinched. Sonny’s fingers stilled and he stood, extending a hand to Rafael.

“Come on.”

“Now? But?” Rafael just looked up at him with the closest approximation to puppy-dog eyes Sonny had ever seen, and as a master of the look, he had to give the man credit. He was close to getting his way, but Sonny’s mind flashed to the expanse of soft mattress and doubled down on his decision.

“Come on. I wanna get my hands on you for real.” Rafael snorted out a laugh, but slipped his hand into Sonny’s and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Sonny tugged him gently down the hall all the way to the bedroom, closing the door behind them but leaving the lights off. 

It was late, and at the end of a week that had left neither of them in the mood for fucking, but there was still something electric about the way Sonny’s hands slipped beneath the hem of Rafael’s t-shirt, working it up and off his chest and arms before slipping it as gently as he could over Rafael’s head. 

He ran his fingers through the grey at his temples, running his thumbs over the tops of Rafael’s cheekbones. He used the pads of his fingers to trace patterns down his jaw and the sides of his neck, over his collarbones and shoulders before he kissed him, warm and wet and unrushed, as his fingers trailed lower and slipped under the waistband of his sweats. He pushed them down as far as he could, letting Rafael do the rest as he turned his attention to the trail of soft, brown hairs that started at Rafael’s belly button and disappeared into a dark patch of curls at his groin.

Sonny turned Rafael and steered him gently the last few steps to the bed, helping ease him down onto his stomach before he stripped out of his own clothes quickly, before easing his own way beneath the sheets, leaning up against the headboard and pulling Rafael’s body to him, pressing him against his side and wrapping a long arm around his warm shoulders. 

Rafael’s hand scratched softly at the planes of Sonny’s stomach, back and forth, his fingers wrapping around his hips with a heavy slide that made Sonny feel weighted to the bed. Rafael’s lips pressed a kiss into the pale flesh above his heart, and Sonny shivered. 

They fell asleep like that, curled into each other, fingers softly exploring one another long after conscious thought had shut off.

*

A few Fridays later, Sonny found himself roused from sleep at the ungodly hour of 2 in the morning by his cell phone practically buzzing off the table. His heart dropped.

No one ever called nonstop at 2am. Not when you weren’t in college anymore.

“Yeah,” he croaked into the phone, his voice faint and still clogged with sleep.

“Oh my god, Sonny?”

The panic and relief in Rafael’s voice was the kind that hit Sonny like a double espresso, helping to shake away the last few vestiges of his until-then good night’s sleep. He sat up and ran a hand over his eyes.

“Rafael? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Daniela.”

Sonny was glad he hadn’t tried to stand yet. His stomach flipped. “What happened?”

“Nothing. No. It’s - she’s fine, Sonny. I mean, she’s not and that’s why I’m calling, but she’s. She’s sick, Sonny. 101 fever and she won’t take her medicine and Marisol is out of town for the weekend and I am  _ not _ calling my mother but I don’t know what to do.”

The longer Rafael spoke, the quicker his words spilled out and the shriller his voice got. And ‘shrill’ was not a word Sonny had ever anticipated using to describe Rafael Barba. Sonny pictured Rafael standing in a generic kitchen, calling him in a panic while Daniela glared at him, arms crossed, cold medicine on the table between them. The image made him smile, and in the pause, somehow Rafael heard it.

“Oh my God, you’re laughing at me, you think I’m a total fool and now you’re--”

“--I do not, Rafael! Look, you have to calm down. Where are you?”

Rafael rattled off an intersection and apartment number and let Sonny know he’d tell the doorman he was coming. “And Sonny?”

“Yeah?”

“Please hurry.”

Forty minutes later, the elevator doors were opening onto a short stretch of hallway and Sonny knocked on Rafael’s apartment door only once before it flew open. 

Rafael was standing just inside the apartment, his shirt covered in patches of sweat and vomit, and his hair was disheveled to a degree Sonny had never seen before. The apartment air felt heavy and still, and there was a glint in Rafael’s eyes the meant he was walking the adrenaline line between exhaustion and productive panic. 

“You look like shit.” The blunt observation had it’s desired effect, and Rafael laughed. Sonny gave him a half smile and held up the plastic bag clutched in his hand. “Can I come in?”

Rafael stepped back and ushered him forward. Sonny did his best to give him a wide berth as he stepped into the apartment and immediately into the kitchen on the left. He set the bag down on the counter and pulled out a six pack of apple juice boxes, a tub of goldfish, several medicine bottles, and a thermos of coffee. He turned and found Rafael leaning against the doorway, stunned look on his face.

“You really are a goddamn superhero aren’t you?” 

Sonny just smirked and quirked an eyebrow at him. “Where’s Daniela?”

Rafael looked stricken again at the mention of his daughter, and pointed towards the living room at the front of the apartment. Now that Sonny was listening for it, he could hear the quiet sniffles and gentle rise and fall of something on TV.

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go get a shower and a fresh change of clothes and I’ll go see how she’s doing, okay?”

“You don’t have to. I mean, she’s my daughter so…” Rafael trailed off as he gazed longingly at the closed door that must have led to his bedroom. Sonny gave him the smallest of pushes towards it. 

“Come on, Rafi. This is why you called, and you’re gonna be no good to anyone if you don’t get a shower and clean t-shirt. Go. It’ll be fine.” Without another word, Rafael kissed him gently on the cheek and went to go clean himself up. Sonny waited until he heard the spray of the shower before taking a deep breath and entering Sick Kid Mode.

As he’d thought, Daniela was curled up into a miserable looking ball on the couch, thin layer of sweat on her forehead as she clutched her Mickey Mouse blanket fiercely. There was a bucket at her feet and a mess of towels in the corner, and that explained the state of Rafael’s shirt.

Without wanting to disturb her, the first thing Sonny did was set about freshening up the room as best he could. He used a clean towel to grab the dirty ones, setting them all in a trash bag that he double tied, setting it in the corner of the bathroom until one of them could get take them taken care of. 

He emptied and washed the bucket Daniela had been using, and said a silent thank you that it was warm enough that April to leave the windows cracked. Sonny could feel the smallest stream of fresh air blow over the window sill, and took a deep breath. All of that being done, it was time to turn his attention to Daniela herself.

Rafael finished his shower and emerged in a clean, long sleeved black t-shirt and pair of grey flannels just in time to see Sonny wave him over.

“I need your help. She’s still burning up, and we’ve gotta get her to take her medicine.”

“She won’t.”

“She will. Grab me that bottle of kids Tylenol that’s on the counter?”

“There’s Tylenol on the table there,” Rafael gestured to the coffee table in front of him.

“That won’t work. Just. Trust me on this one, okay?”

“Okay,” Rafael said skeptically, going back to the kitchen and grabbing the bottle of grape Tylenol off the counter. He also managed to grab the thermos of coffee for good measure, taking a long, too-hot sip as he handed the bottle to Sonny.

“I’m gonna hold her, and you’re gonna give her this, okay,” Sonny handed a small plastic cup back to Rafael about half full with a thick, purple liquid. Rafael took it gingerly and looked at Sonny like the man had handed him a syringe and told him to get injecting. If hadn’t looked so scared, Sonny might have laughed. 

Instead, he caught Rafael’s eye and did spoke reassuringly. “You can do this, Rafael. She’s a kid, you’re her dad, no one likes to take medicine, alright? Just. You can do this.” Sonny lifted Daniela to a sitting position, slipping behind her until she was propped against his side. Knowing the first lines of toddle defense against medicine, he held the sides of her head lightly. She whimpered and tried to flinch away, her eyes still closed, and Sonny looked expectantly at Rafael. 

Rafael cast his eyes skyward and looked, for the briefest moment, like he was about to cross himself. Instead, he leaned forward and over Daniela, holding the plastic cup to her still-shaking head.

"Vamos, cariña, solo necesito que tomes esto, por favor, hazlo para papá, te sentirás mucho mejor,” Rafael muttered to her in Spanish, his tone warm and pleading. Daniela opened her mouth just enough to let Rafael spill the thick medicine into her mouth in a slow trickle. Rafael held the cup until it was empty, and when it was gone Daniela turned her head and fell into Sonny's lap, head on the top of his thighs. She stretched out her little body and stuck her feet under Rafael’s hip to keep them warm. 

Wordlessly, Sonny mimed at Rafael until he got the hint and went to retrieve a green and purple pillow from the girls bedroom.  He handed it to Sonny, who managed to slip it under Daniela’s head without her stirring.

Rafael sank back to the couch and took Daniela’s feet into his lap, easing get Mickey blanket from between clenched fists to drape more fully over her body. He picked up the remote from the back of the couch, starting the movie over and turning the volume down even lower.

“How did you do that,” he asked, voice pitched low as he ran his hand up and down Daniela's thin calf.

Sonny chuckled and shrugged, fingers gently running through Daniela's hair, scratching at her scalp and carefully untangling knots as he found them. “It's cherry,” he murmured, gesturing to the Tylenol on the table. “Worst flavor. Gotta get the grape and let it do all the work.”

Rafael nodded before closing his eyes and resting his head on the back of the couch. “I can't do this.”

“Not much to do now that she's asleep.”

“Not that. This. All of this. I've four decades of case law stored in my brain, but I'm never going to remember to buy grape medicine because it goes down smoother.”

Sonny made a clucking sound with his tongue and stretched out his arm, barely able to brush his fingers along the side of Rafael's face. Eyes still closed, Rafael leaned into the touch. “You're doing fine, Rafael. Really.”

“You are so good with her. It's - it really is like you have a super power. Like you were made for this. For us.” 

Sonny gulped but Rafael didn't open his eyes. His voice sounded heavy and low, like he was fighting through sleep to speak. “No one fits here. But you do. She loves you.”

Sonny was shocked at how badly he wanted those words to be a little bit different, a simple pronoun switched.

“Nah. She has fun with me. But I'm her teacher.  _ You're  _ her dad.”

He scoffed and opened his eyes to stare at Sonny. Sonny just ran the very tips of his fingers over his eyelids and shut them gently again. “Sleep, Rafi. It'll be better in the morning.”

He didn't know if he meant Daniela's fever, or Rafael's exhaustion, or some other third, nebulous thing entirely. But as Rafael nodded and closed his eyes, sinking down further into the couch and cupping Daniela's feet affectionately, Sonny realized it didn't matter. It was true. 

It would all look better in the daylight.

Sonny was too amped up to sleep, the after effect of traveling across town in the middle of the night to help a man he was seeing take care of his daughter in her time of need. It was damn near paternal, which was damn near terrifying.

Sonny watched the flickering Technicolor light from the movie dance across the planes of Rafael's face as he slipped into sleep. The wrinkles and creases in his face smoothed out,and he looked younger. Looked like a man unplagued by the perils and pitfalls of adulthood.

Sonny wanted to reach out and touch him, to run his fingers, his lips, soft as silk over every inch of his face, just like this. But he couldn't wake him. 

He'd been so scared. A simple cold, and he'd been so scared. It was always scary the first time it happened, but she was already three, and not for the first time his heart broke for Rafael.

When Rafael's gentle snores began, Sonny reached out and plucked the remote from where it had fallen out of Rafael's hand. He clicked the movie off an settled back against the pillows, closing his eyes until the afterglow of the TV was long gone.

And sitting there in the dark, hand in Daniela's hair and Rafael a warm presence next to him on the couch, Sonny saw the truth like it was painted in neon.

He was in love. 

With Rafael Barba.

Who was scared and angry and possibly irreparably damaged, just like Sonny. Who had a daughter he was desperate to know and getting better at caring for with each passing day, and with whom Sonny was smitten. Who was sexy, and sultry, and equal measures of smart and smartass.

It was perfect, except in all the ways it wasn't. Ways that were far easier to ignore in the sleepy shadows of Rafael's new apartment.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life went a bit off the rails lately, friends, so this took me far longer than it should have.
> 
> Thanks to Power-Bottom-Barba an AHumanFemale for the beta, and each of my dear and darling friends for how amazing you've been these last few weeks. I wouldn't - couldn't - still be here without y'all.
> 
> With no further ado: standard disclaimers & be sure to tip your ficcers.

After that night, the one they would later take to calling Sonny's ‘shining armor night’, things shifted.

Not by much, but still.  They were different. 

Sometime in the early dawn hours, the light in the apartment a dusty lavender, Sonny had jerked awake, his back screaming. He managed to shake Rafael awake, helping him lift Daniela gently and carry her to bed. They tucked her in gently, working as they had before to get another dose of Tylenol down her throat before she fell. immediately back to sleep. Sonny pressed his wrist to her forehead and smiled  with relief - her skin was clammy and she was still warm, but her fever had broken and she would most like be much better by the time she woke up.

He explained this to Rafael, who just nodded and looked relieved, his arms crossed as he leaned against her doorway and watched the two of them, exhausted bags under his eyes. Sonny smoothed Daniela’s hair away from her face before moving to stand behind Rafael, hand on his shoulders and cheek pressed against his temple. He ducked his head and placed a soft kiss to the spot where neck met shoulder, and then gently steered Rafael down the short hall to his own room.

He smiled as heard Rafael flop on to the bed with a heavy sigh, but he closed the door and crossed back to the couch rather than joining him. The last thing he needed was Daniela waking up for God knows what reason and walking in to find her dad and her preschool teacher in bed together. He found and old Star Trek rerun on TV and snuggled back onto the couch, spreading out his long legs and tucking a folded pillow under his neck. 

When he woke again, the light in the apartment was bright and clear and Rafael was sitting in the armchair next to the couch, mug of coffee balanced on the arm as he flipped through a stack of papers and made various notes on a legal pad. Sonny stretched and sat up slowly, pulling his knees to his chest as he pulled back into the corner of the couch. “Morning.”

“Morning, Lancelot. How you feeling?”

Sonny gently rolled his head left and right, feeling the stretch through his neck and along his shoulders. With a quick jerk, he popped his neck on both sides and exhaled deeply. “Not too bad, all things considered. I could do with some of that coffee, if you’ve got any.”

Rafael gestured towards the kitchen. “There are clean mugs on the drying rack and cream and sugar on the counter.” 

Sonny stood slowly, unfurling himself from the couch. He peeked in on Daniela as he passed her room, but she was facing the wall and breathing heavily, the light through her heavy curtains a dusky rose. He poured himself a cup of coffee in the biggest mug he could find - all of Rafael’s mugs were too small by half - and returned to the living room, sinking back on to the couch and tossing his feet up on to the coffee table. He sipped slowly at his coffee as it cooled, flipping through the early versions of the morning news, checking headlines and making the occasional comment under his breath as Rafael continued to scratch notes from his corner chair. 

“Waffles or pancakes?” Sonny asked at another commercial break. Rafael didn’t look up from his notes, his pen moving quickly across the paper. Sonny picked up the pillow sitting next to him and lobbed it gently across the room, knocking it in to Rafael’s knees and he jumped. He looked at Sonny with a frown as his glasses slid down his nose. “I said waffles or pancakes?”

“Sonny….the only thing in my refrigerator right now is applesauce and merlot. There is no way you’re making waffles, pancakes, or any other kind of food in my kitchen.”

Sonny scoffed and went to the kitchen; Rafael heard him open the refrigerator door, pause, and shut it again. When he looked up from his notes again, Sonny was standing in the kitchen door with a quart-sized jar of applesauce in one hand and a half-empty bottle of red in the other.

“You really weren’t kidding. You really don’t have anything else. You don’t even have salt in your salt shaker.” Rafael shrugged, half-smile resting on his face.

“The place is still new. It’s the first time Daniela has been here, and you don’t usually need to salt take out, so,” Rafael shrugged with one shoulder, his voice playful. 

Sonny rolled his eyes and sighed exasperatedly. “So I’ll run to the market. We’re going to need Sprite for when Daniela wakes up anyway.”

“We?”

“Well. It’s Saturday. I figure you’ll be at home with a sick kid, I don’t have anywhere better to be. Let me make you breakfast.”

Rafael opened his mouth to respond, but his stomach rumbled in response and he clicked his jaw shut. Sonny bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, and waited. 

“Pancakes,” Rafael said after a few more beats, and Sonny gave a decisive nod. He returned the meager supplies to the refrigerator and ambled back out into the living room, slipping his jeans on and grabbing his keys from where he’d left them in his back pocket.

He crossed behind Rafael’s chair and kissed him lightly on the head, and as he began to walk away Rafael’s hand darted out and closed around his wrist, pulling him back for a lazy kiss that started with the  press of lips and ended with Sonny’s hand curled possessively around Rafael’s neck. 

“Blueberry pancakes?” Rafael said, his voice pleading and that attempt at puppy dog eyes back on his face. Sonny wasn’t successful in holding back a laugh this time, and he nodded and kissed Rafael on the top of the head before grabbing his wallet off the table and heading out to the bodega on the corner for a handful of essentials. 

Breakfast passed in a haze of powdered sugar and endless espresso, Daniela snuggled onto the couch in between them, nibbling on a pancake and playing a game on Rafael’s tablet as Sonny and Rafael held hands along the back of the couch, watching some stupid show on the Food Network with the volume turned down. Eventually, Rafael went back to his notes, Daniela fell back to sleep, and Sonny managed to extricate himself and head back to his place, his thoughts racing as he did his own grocery shopping and trekked a few loads of laundry up and down the stairs. 

He did his best the rest of the weekend to keep himself busy. He made cookies for his mom to take to her quilting circle at church, tearing his kitchen apart for the tupperware marked with her hastily scrawled 'Tessa Carisi' on the bottom. He prepped another few weeks of lesson plans, putting himself another month ahead of schedule - at this rate, he’d be ready for Christmas by the time the students moved up in May. He shot his way through so many rounds of Call of Duty he lost track - all to keep words like ‘love’ and ‘commitment’ and ‘family’ from filling his mind and bringing flashes of Rafael’s smile to his every waking thought. 

It was easier during the week, when work and running and the early hours kept him busy and wiped out. But, inevitably, the weekend would roll around and Rafael would call.

That was, until it wasn’t just Rafael calling, and it wasn’t just on the weekends.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sonny!”

Sonny almost spit his beer across his apartment, instead managing to cough it down, back of his hand pressed to his mouth. “D-Daniela?” he gasped after his coughing fit had mostly passed. 

“Night, Sonny,” she chirped, as though calling him every night was a normal occurrence.

“Night, Daniela,” he responded after a beat.

“Sleep good, ‘kay?”

“Yeah. You too. Good dreams.”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the line, and then Rafael’s voice was in Sonny’s ear, low and apologetic. 

“I’m sorry. She found your name in my phone, I have no idea how.”

“Am I the only “S” in your phone?” The lack of response was all the answer he needed. “We did the letter “S” during circle time last week.”

“Fuck,” Rafael swore under his breath, but it was impressed rather than angry.

“I told you she was smart, Rafi.”

“I tried to take the phone away, but she flipped out. It just seemed easier. I really am sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said, fidgeting with the beer bottle in his hand. It most definitely  _ wasn’t  _ fine - he could already picture a whole host of things Liv might have to say about it - but he wasn’t about to tell Rafael that. “I’m glad you called.”

“You are?”

“Always,” he said, and the earnestness in his voice made his own ears turn pink. 

“Goodnight, Sonny,” Rafael said, a chuckle hidden underneath his words.

“Night, Rafi,” he said.

From then on, it became a part of their routine, another link in the chain between their two worlds. If Daniela was at Rafael’s, she would insist on calling him to say goodnight. No matter what tactics Rafael tried, no matter how many times Sonny reassured him that really, it was honestly fine, Daniela wouldn’t relent until she’d gotten to say goodnight to Sonny.

That’s all it was, really - at three, she was far from a witty conversationalist. But it was enough. Sometimes Sonny worried it might be too much. What did she do when she was at Marisol’s? Did she talk about him? He hadn’t thought about it before, and looking at it under too harsh a light now was making him feel sick.

“Rafael, you don’t ever, I don’t know, worry do you?” He asked after one particularly bad Tuesday night call, where even after their goodnights and goodbyes he could hear Daniela screaming in her room. 

“Worry about what?”

“About this. The calls, her needing to call me.”

“I wasn’t. Now I am. Do you want us to stop calling?”

“God, no, not at all. It’s just - it seems like it means a lot to her. And I don’t want it to mean too much, you know?”

Rafael went silent on the other end for long enough that Sonny wanted to eat his words, to fill the silence with reassurances that, really, everything was fine and it wasn’t. “It means a lot to the both of us that she gets to call you, Sonny. Maybe I’ve done a bad job of letting you know how much it means.”

“No, Rafael! God, I didn’t want you to-”

“Come with me this Sunday. To pick Daniela up from her mom. We’re meeting at the Children’s Museum, and she’s bringing Tom. Come with me.”

Tom was Marisol’s new boyfriend, and from everything Sonny had gotten out of Daniela, he was tall and had a beard and made good dinosaur noises. More importantly, if Tom was finally meeting Rafael, things were kicking up a notch for him and Marisol. And if Rafael wanted Sonny there too… “Sonny? You still there?”

“Yeah. Yes. I’d love to come with you this Sunday.”

Rafael’s grin was so big, Sonny could hear it through the phone.

*

Sonny spent the majority of his waking hours around children, which theoretically should have calmed him down for a trip to the Children’s Museum. His stomach roiled as he stepped out of the cab, Daniela’s small hand slipping into his grip as he turned to help her. Unfortunately, the cheery blue banner and railings of the museum did nothing to comfort him. Rafael followed behind Daniela, chuckling gently as he caught the look on Sonny’s face.

“You going to be alright there, Mr. Carisi?”

“What? Yeah. Of course.” Sonny gulped and plastered a grin on his face. It was hard to stay focus on much else, though, as Daniela practically radiated with glee beside him.

Inside, the place was a mess. It was noisy and crowded, but Sonny knew from hearing the daycare parents talk that this place was always a bit of a madhouse on the weekends. Sonny was just glad they hadn’t had to wait in line. 

As soon as they paid for their tickets, Daniela was off like a bolt of lightning. Sonny took off after her, his long legs making it his de facto job. Rafael followed behind them, hand in his pocket and smirk on his face. He caught up with them just as Daniela was wheedling Sonny into a pink and purple tutu at the Let’s Dance exhibit. She’d make quick work of getting herself into a pair of silver fairy wings and chunky glitter sandals to match, a plastic microphone gripped tightly in her hand. 

“Gonna miss it, Sonny!” She was saying over and over again, pulling on his hand as he did his best to squirm his miles of legs into the inches of tutu while also trying to remain vertical. He could only imagine the sight they made, especially as Rafael burst into bright, clear laughter when he walked up on him.

“Don’t think you’re getting out of this,” Sonny said menacingly, pointing a long finger at Rafael and gesturing at a technicolor stack of tulle, glitter, and velcro in the far corner behind him. “There’s plenty of costume to go around.”

Rafael clicked his tongue and waggled a finger in Sonny’s face. “I took my turn, remember? Besides,” he dropped down to one knee to tuck a long strand of Daniela’s hair behind her ear, “pop stars always need paparazzi, right?”

“Right,” she echoed up at him, beaming, before wrapping small arms around his neck and planting a noisy kiss high on his cheekbone. He swooped her up, spinning them both to face Sonny, cheeks pressed together and matching green eyes shining. The pair of them together, smiling and staring at Sonny, was just about enough to ruin him. 

Instead, he held his hands out and took Daniela from Rafael, positioning them both underneath the nearest spotlight and poking her gently under the ribs, so that she giggled at the exact moment Rafael raised his phone and snapped a picture. “Don’t think I won’t hold these against you later,” Rafael teased under his breath as Daniela made her way to the long bar and set of mirrors, glancing surreptitiously at a group of older girls practicing what appeared to be actual ballet moves. 

“Don’t think that’s all you’ll be holding against me,” Sonny shot back, and Rafael practically choked on his own saliva, his eyebrows sky-high and his cheeks flushed as he struggled to regain his composure. Sonny, in turn, just shrugged a shoulder and grinned. 

Rafael opened his mouth to respond at the exact moment Daniela’s bright “Mommy!” rang out across the room. 

Sonny whipped his head around so fast it was a miracle he didn’t pull something.

The woman Daniela ran up to was at once exactly like Sonny had imagined and nothing like he’d pictured her. She was shorter, curvier, all compact muscle and a kind of kick-your-ass brashness that Sonny could see from where he stood. Her dark hair fell almost to the small of her back, and her eyes were happy even though she looked tired. What adult Manhattanite with kids didn’t look tired, though?

She was beautiful. It was no wonder Rafael had married her. 

Next to him, Rafael had gone still. Sonny reached out and threaded their fingers together, catching Rafael’s eyes and giving him the smallest look of confusion. He was thrilled to be here, but was more than willing to get lost if it would make things easier for Rafael. Instead, Rafael shook his head slightly and smiled nervously.

“Come on,” he said. He approached Marisol just as she passed Daniela to Tom, giving Rafael the chance to give her a brief, awkward hug.

“Good to see you, Rafi. This is Tom.” She gestured to the tall man standing behind her, auburn beard and manbun completing the fresh out of Brooklyn look. Rafael shook the man’s hand and Sonny was proud of him for restraining himself to an only mildly intimidating appraisal. For a second, Sonny flashed back to when Liv had introduced them, the way Rafael had seemed to see and see through everything around him all at once. And Sonny wasn’t the man currently dating his ex-wife. 

“Nice to meet you, Tom. Daniela’s been talking my ear off about you.”

“All good, I hope,” Tom said, reaching up to ruffle the little girl’s ponytail playfully as she giggled and buried her face in Tom’s neck.

“Tommmmm,” she whined and wiggled until he put her down. 

“All great,” Rafael reassured him, reaching out for Daniela as she danced and twirled around the small group of adults. She gripped his hand and reached out for Tom too, swinging herself between the pair of strong grips as she begged to go upstairs.

“In a second, querida,” Marisol attempted to quiet the whirling ball of energy that was her daughter. She held out a hand to Sonny and tossed her hair over shoulder. Her smile was kind, and Sonny felt himself calmed by her presence. “You must be Sonny, it’s so nice to finally meet you.”

“You too, Marisol. It’s easy to see where Daniela gets that killer smile from.” 

Marisol blushed and Tom rolled his eyes slightly while Rafael scoffed. “Thanks,” he said with mock consternation. Sonny just nudged him gently with his shoulder and smiled. It felt suspiciously easy, all of them together, and it set off an alarm bell inside Sonny. This was the woman Rafael had been incapable of speaking about a few short months ago, and yet they stood next to each other as though no time or space at all had passed. For the first time, Sonny regretted not pushing Rafael for the history between them. 

“You’re a sweetheart - hang on to this one, yeah Rafi?”

“I’m trying,” Rafael said, winking at Sonny and finally managing to snag Daniela’s tutu with a strong enough grip to pull her close. “Hey, Sonny and I have to get going soon.”

“Upstairs, daddy!” 

She jumped up and down, pointing wildly at the ceiling above them, and Rafael glanced at Marisol, who shrugged. 

“Dora and Diego are up a floor, and weren’t too busy when we were up there a bit ago.”

At the first ‘D’ in Dora, Daniela was off, sprinting for the staircase and not bothering to look back. Rafael and Marisol exchanged exasperated sighs while Tom took off running, his position close to the stairwell making him the only one with a hope of catching up. Rafael and Marisol fell in step behind him, chatting companionably about the schedule for the upcoming week, while Sonny took up the rear, giving everyone a chance to get mostly up the stairs before he followed.

It wasn’t that he felt like the third wheel. The opposite, in fact - it had been a long, long time since he’d walked into a situation in his adult life where he felt like he fit so rightly. His first day of law school classes stuck out in his memory, as did the party after his niece’s Christening, but that’s where the list ended. 

He was lost in the thought when he crested the stairs and plowed head first into a family making their way down the stairs in the opposite direction. He stumbled, reaching out to steady the man he’d almost knocked over, his eyes searching for where Rafael and Daniela had actually gone. He was distracted, which was the only excuse he had for practically jumping out of his skin when a low voice filled his ear. 

“Mr. Carisi!” Peter Stone and his wife, Jennifer, stood in front of them, their pair of five year old twin boys  beaming in front of them, fresh-pressed khakis and sweater vests making them look like constant Stepford children. “It’s so good to see you!”

“The boys miss your class so much,” Jennifer added, placing a perfectly manicured hand on top of the boys’ heads. The continued to smile at Sonny, hands in their pockets, and a cold shiver ran through Sonny. It was a familiar feeling around the Stone family.

“Well, EPK misses them, too, Mrs. Stone. You guys having a good Sunday?”

“Excellent! Just finishing up here, and then it’s off to the store to get ready for pajama day!” 

Sonny mentally slapped a hand to his forehead. Spirit week was coming up, and he’d completely forgotten.

“You guys going to get some cool PJs,” he asked David and Dylan, dropping to kneel in front of them. He could never quite remember which one was which, although they allegedly weren’t identical. Sonny usually just played it safe and referred to them as a unit.

“Yes, sir,” David/Dylan said.

“The coolest,” Dylan/David added.

“I can’t wait to see them!” Almost as much as he couldn’t wait to say his goodbyes and find Rafael. “In fact, make sure you stop by my room Monday so I can see them, okay?”

“Okay,” they said in unison, and walked around Sonny and started down the steps. They moved as one and Sonny wanted to do a double take. Jennifer  followed quickly, tossing a goodbye to Sonny over her shoulder. 

He was spared, however, by Daniela, who came charging up to him and threatened to take him out at the knees. “Sonny, come - animals! Come see!” She tugged violently on his hand, and Sonny smiled sheepishly at the Stone’s. He made some kind of vague apology and prayed that they could just finish saying goodbye before-

“Daniela, let go of Sonny before you rip his arm out of the socket.” Rafael’s voice was stern, and Daniela stopped pulling quite so fiercly, perhaps momentarily mollified by the idea that she might be hurting Sonny. An idea of the moment, as it wasn’t more than a beat before she was pulling him again, desperate to drag both he and her dad back to the fake safari. 

Instead, Rafael pulled her into his arms and came to stand next to Sonny, doing a double take when he saw who it was he was talking to.

“Stone?” It wasn’t quite disgust that laced through Rafael’s tone, but it was close, tempered by a fair bit of surprise. Stone looked equally taken aback - and equally taken aback to see Rafael.

“Barba. Who’s this?” He tilted his chin towards Daniela and Sonny fought the urge to curl instinctively around both her and Rafael. Something about the cold cut of Stone’s gaze told him that would be a supremely bad idea.

“Tell him your name, sweetie,” Rafael prompted, and Daniela held out a hand, serious expression plastered on her young face.

“I’m Daniela.”

“Hi, Daniela. Are you having fun with your mom and dad today?” He asked it casually, but the question set Sonny’s teeth on edge. Next to him, he felt Rafael still. Daniela nodded beaming. “Uh-huh. Daddy, Sonny, Momma, Tom. Tom!” She said the last name twice, as if she’d momentarily forgotten that Tom existed, and was in fact at the museum waiting to play with her at that very minute. She wiggled until Rafael put her down, waving ‘bye’ to all of them before dashing again. Rafael watched her go, but Sonny’s attention was still focused on Stone.

“Beautiful day to take the family to the museum,” he said.

“Isn’t it just?” Sonny looked back and forth between the two men, his brain aching as he tried to get a grasp on whatever conversation was clearly going on just beneath the surface. “I didn’t realize your kids went to St. Catherine’s, Stone. It’s an awfully long way out to Staten Island, isn’t it?”

“You know, it is, but when Jack McCoy says he can get you into a preschool, you don’t really ask a bunch of questions. Plus I don’t have to tell you how long the waitlists are for a good place in the city.”

The name Jack McCoy pinged something in Sonny’s brain, a flash of dark hair and wise eyes he’d seen floating around the admin office. He’d been a founding benefactor of the daycare, and had given Liv her first foot in the door ages ago. Sonny didn’t know him personally, but it made sense that a parent with his direct recommendation had signed on the dotted line without a second look.

“And what about you? Or, well, I guess it’s obvious. It’s hard to to beat 24/7 access to the staff,” he said casually. Sonny’s cheeks flamed red and he wanted to sink through the floor. Stone stared at Rafael, whose jaw was clenched so tightly it looked like the muscle might snap. Sonny opened his mouth to speak, but Rafael beat him to it.

“Oh, I wouldn’t really know about accessing the staff, Peter. How is Jennifer, anyway? So sorry Rita didn’t have the room to represent her for your div-’’

“I’m so sorry, gentleman, but we’ve really got to get going Rafael - if we don’t, we’ll miss those lunch reservations Marisol made for us.” Sonny’s tone was forced, and he’d turn to put his back to Peter, desperate to catch Rafael’s eye and put some physical space between the two men. Peter’s face had darkened by degrees with every word Rafael spoke, and the ugliness between them had gone from simmer to boil.

It was bad enough that they’d run into Peter. Things would only get worse if the two decided to brawl in the middle of a group of Manhattan toddlers. Rafael’s eyes were wild, his face flushed as he stared Sonny down for a beat, two, nodding brusquely and walking off without so much as another word to Peter. 

Sonny looked at Stone and half-shrugged, at a genuine loss for what to do. He opened and shut his mouth uselessly as Stone watched Rafael walk off, his eyes narrowed.

“You really know how to pick ‘em, Carisi,” Stone murmured, low and threatening.

“Excuse me?” He’d kept his mouth shut so far, and wasn’t looking to pick any fights, but he  _ was  _ from Staten Island, and he wouldn’t have Rafael slandered in his presence. 

Stone made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat and when he finally looked at Sonny again, what Sonny saw there scared him. It wasn’t hate, it was something far more chilling - resignation.

“I guess we’ll see you Monday,” Stone said, clapping him on the shoulder while at the same time gently pushing Sonny out of the way. He was down the stairs before Sonny could reply, which was probably for the best anyway. With a single glance over his shoulder, Sonny went to track down Rafael. 

The rest of the day could have passed for almost normal - they ate an overpriced lunch in the museum cafeteria, adults awkwardly perched on chairs that bordered on too small. They said quick and quiet goodbyes, Daniela having fallen asleep against Tom’s shoulder. And then Sonny was on his way home, excuses about groceries and lunch prep and the next day’s early hour providing convenient cover for the low, acidic burn in the pit of his stomach. 

He went through all his favorite Sunday night rituals - a decaf latte, his fancy bath soap (gifted from his mother) and a face mask (stolen from Gina under risk of eternal mockery), and the latest episodes of his top three podcasts (two political, one a recap of The Bachelor so he could stay fluent in Carisi sisters). It worked well enough to get him to sleep just shy of midnight, logging him a solid five hours before he was back on his feet and trudging towards the  _ real  _ coffee this time.

In fact, he’d calmed himself enough that he was practically able to forget having to be nervous for the day, as he slipped on the plaid flannel pants and Nirvana t-shirt that was his chosen pajama day attire. His nerve-free state lasted him the entire drive to work, and even all the way to his classroom.

Until Liv stuck her head out of her office and called his name.

“Sonny. We need to talk.”


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one hurt a little, guys, and wouldn't have been possible without:
> 
> a.) every single Beyonce break-up song on record
> 
> b.) Robin Hood's perpetual help and skills as the world's best beta reader.
> 
> Standard disclaimers, please make sure to throw the extra comments/kudos rattling around in the bottom of your purse into the tip jar. no one likes to jingle.

“Olivia. You have to be kidding me.”

“You know I’m not, Dominick.” He tried not to flinch at the use of his given name, an ingrained reaction from years under Tessa’s unceasing gaze. “We talked about this.”

Sonny’s stomach clenched, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth as a second wave of nausea shuddered through him. In front of him, Olivia had flipped her laptop around on her desk to show him the email chain - and, more damning, the pictures attached. 

Sonny, Rafael, and Daniela walking out of the Children’s Museum hand in hand, Marisol close behind, smile soft but sad. Rafael hugging Marisol as Sonny held Daniela, their foreheads pressed close together. And the last picture, a zoomed-in shot, blurry but effective in it’s damnation: Sonny and Rafael, lips pressed together lightly as Daniela scrambled down for the cab.

Sonny remembered each of the moments perfectly, had until seconds ago counted them among some of his happier ones. Now, they were tinted with the sour feeling of unspent adrenaline, the edges burned and curling from the slow seep of acidic hatred. 

He had a good idea who was responsible, and a flash of blonde hair and a square, punchable jaw, flashed through his mind before he saw red.

“Who sent these to you?” He asked for the fifth time in as many minutes.

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“You know I’ll find out eventually.” Liv just shrugged and flipped her laptop back around.

“Be that as it may, Dominick, I’m under as much responsibility to the confidences of my parents as I am to my teachers-” at this her eyebrow rose, and heat rushed to Sonny’s face “-and this particular parent has asked to remain anonymous.”

“So you’re firing me?” He didn’t  _ want  _ his voice to break, god damn it. He’d lost jobs before, hell he’d been fired from jobs before. But the photos on the laptop kept looping through his mind, a stunning breach of privacy and a violation that got under is skin in a way he couldn’t put words to. 

Olivia shook her head and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. “No. I’ve been advised at this point to offer you a change in position. As you know, Brenda has needed extra help in the kitchen for a few weeks now. We’ve all had your goodies at the potlucks,” Liv chuckled, desperate to clear the mood even as the scowl on Sonny’s face deepened, “and I think it would be a great fit.”

“You do, huh? A great fit.” Sonny’s voice was cold. He clenched his hands into fists on his lap to keep them from shaking, his nails digging in until they left sickly white half-moons in his skin.

So much of all of this was beyond fucked up. The anonymous parent, being ratted out as though he were back with Jimmy Durante behind the bleachers at Tottenville High and not an adult, in full control of his life. He could feel his breath shortening, feel the pressure of his rib cage as his lungs refused to expand. It was disgusting, and insult was added to injury when Olivia’s diplomatic tone reached across the divide and did nothing to soothe his nerves. She spoke like an automaton, and Sonny had a feeling there had been more than one HR phone call before she’d pulled him into her office. 

“Dominick?” Olivia’s tone was concerned. His gaze jerked from a spot on her desk to her face, and some instinct inside him recoiled, ashamed. He saw pity in her eyes, and a motherly, tender affection, and it made him want to scream.

“Stop it, Olivia.” The venom in his tone was enough that it forced her back in her seat, and Sonny felt the first brick in the dam crumble to dust. “Just, stop it. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like?”

“Like you’re my ma and you just caught me trying to sneak out to go necking. Rafael and I are adults, who have made our own decisions, and that’s all there is to it.

Olivia nodded, opening her mouth before snapping it shut again and taking a deep breath. “Sonny.” She’d slipped back into his nickname, and it was enough that when Sonny exhaled the next time, his shoulders began to shake, the center losing hold as Sonny struggled to keep his thoughts straight. “Sonny. I’m so, so sorry. You know it wouldn’t be like this, if I had my way. But the parent...they’re a friend of Jack’s.” If he hadn’t already been so sure of who had sent the email, that would have confirmed it for him. “And I  _ did  _ tell you that you had to keep it strictly professional with all your parents.”

Sonny nodded, resigned. He felt, an empty feeling, as though his rage had burned so hot and so fast, it had consumed all shreds of anything else. And now all he wanted was to be home. To be past whatever the next inevitabilities were and to the ‘next step’ of it all.

“I can’t go hide in the kitchen, Liv. Do you have any idea how mortifying that would be?”

“No one has to know what happened.”

It was Sonny’s turn to raise an eyebrow, not bothering to bite back his scoff. They both knew the nonexistent odds that the Sonny-Kissed-A-Dad story wasn’t already on it’s way through every single employee. “Come on, Liv.”

“Sonny…”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t - I won’t...You’re asking me to hide. To be so embarrassed of what I did that I just go run and hide. Not to mention the idea that just because I’m in love with a man means I’m no longer fit to work with the kids-” Olivia opened her mouth to rebut, but Sonny held up a hand, cutting her off. “Please, Liv. Don’t bullshit me now. I know what the policy says, but you know what this is really about. If Amanda had been caught dating a dad, and you’d gotten these pictures, would you shuffle her off to the kitchen?”

Olivia cleared her throat and shifted uncomfortably. “According to policy, all staff members will be disciplined if relationships with parents are found to be unprofessional in any capacity.”

“Fuck your policy.” Sonny’s voice was low and sharp, biting through consonants like he was afraid he’d choke on them. “Your policy is bullshit, and if you think acting like you’d change it if you could makes you any better than them, you’re full of it.” Sonny leveled his stare, cold and unforgiving.

Olivia just sat across from him, her fingers tented in front of her face like he was a puzzle she was working to crack. “You really like him, don’t you?” Sonny’s cheeks flamed and he suddenly couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. 

“That’s not any of your business.”

“He’s my friend, whatever else this current situation might have you thinking. You need to think really hard about this, Dominick,” her tone was final, sadness creeping around the edges. “I know you’re an adult, and your decisions are you own. But if you don’t want to take the kitchen position, we will have to let you go.” She leaned across the desk and put her hand on Sonny’s forearm. “Are you sure that’s what Rafael would want?”

Sonny wasn’t sure how to answer that. 

So he didn’t. 

He stood, and without a word, walked out of Olivia’s off, pulling the door shut quietly behind him. 

\------------------------------------------

He should have gone home. He should have taken the time to shower, eat, maybe even sleep. 

But he skipped right past go, lost his proverbial two-hundred dollars, and went straight to Rafael’s office, driving into the city in a daze. He let his feet steer him down the familiar hallways while his brain flitted between a million ideas, emotions, potentialities. He was brought up short when he heard Carmen’s gentle voice and felt a warm grip on his elbow. 

He turned his head to look at her, her warm brown eyes dark with concern, her brow furrowed. Sonny had the urge to reach out and soothe down her stress, like he did with Rafael late at night, pulling him away from the legal pads and piles of paper that threatened to consume him. He felt both near and far, like he was speaking to Carmen down the length of a tunnel, even as he felt her warmth standing next to him. 

And in what felt to Sonny like a single blink, Carmen was gone and Rafael was there, steering him through the door of his office and sitting him down at the conference table. Sonny registered half a dozen paper cups of coffee and a half-finished Cuban on a stack of napkins at the far end of the table, but then Rafael’s hands were cupping his face and all he could see was green, worried concerned frantic panicked green. 

“I quit my job,” he found himself saying, even as his brain rushed to correct him, to add the layers to the story that would somehow make what happened okay. The floodgates opened, and Sonny babbled, starting with Liv pulling him into her office and veering between the disgust in his stomach, the budding unease mixing with a nebulous anger and hatred that left his mouth continually bitter. 

And the pictures. Sonny choked on his own tongue as he tried to explain, but the more he spoke the more he wished he could stop speaking. With every word, Rafael’s face seemed to grow a shade paler, his lips pressed into a tighter and tighter line. By the time Rafael had the story sussed out, his voice was deceptively calm, danger dancing underneath. 

“Peter Stone took photos of us? Kissing? And emailed them to your work?”

Sonny shrugged. “I don’t know. Liv couldn’t tell me, wouldn’t tell me, if it was actually him. But yeah. That’s my guess.”

“I’ll kill him,” Rafael growled, and Sonny chuckled, humorless.

“Don’t. He’s not worth it.”

“He could be worth a decent chunk of change if you wanted to hit him with a civil suit…”

Sonny just reached out and pulled Rafael’s chair closer to his own, leaning forward and wrapping one hand around the other man’s neck, pulling him in until their foreheads met. Sonny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the warmth radiating off the other man. “Not now, Rafi, please.” He heard the other man’s deep breath, felt the warm breath ghost over the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones.

“Fine.” He pressed a kiss to Sonny’s forehead, but Sonny could feel the tension still coiled in his muscles. “Right now, we wallow. Tomorrow, we make a game plan for talking to Olivia. I’ll talk to her.”

“Why bother?”

He felt Rafael still beneath him, felt the pluck of tension ripple through the room, and he braced. “So you can get your job back, Sonny. There’s other stuff going on-”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I’m sure if you just take a few days and talk to her again-”

“I can’t work there anymore, Rafael.”

Rafael pulled back, and Sonny leaned back in his own chair, the small distance between them growing with every moment that passed. Rafael seemed to be studying Sonny, and wasn’t thrilled with whatever answers he found.

“You can’t just let them push you out like that. This isn’t about you, Sonny. This is about Peter and I.”

Sonny tried not to feel a deep stab of hurt. “Oh, I dunno, feels like it’s about me, since I’m the one that got fired.”

Rafael look at him, annoyed. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t know  _ what  _ you meant. I don’t know why you think this is all about you and Peter, and not me and you, all I know is I had a job when I went to bed last night, and now I don’t.”

Rafael stood and began to pace. “It doesn’t matter. It’s ancient history. Now we just need to figure out how to let Olivia know the kind of man she’s dealing with. God, this things I know about Peter - maybe I’ll get our old pal Rita on the phone, or see if Buchanan has a few extra minutes to write a scathing character review.”

“Rafael. Stop.” Sonny’s voice was tired. “I don’t want to talk about Peter Stone. That’s not why I came here.”

“I don’t see why not.” Sonny’s head shot up so fast he felt something crack in his neck. Rafael was still leaning back in his chair, eyes full of anger and eyebrow crooked like razor-wire. “He’s why he lost your job.”

“I lost my job for kissing my boyfriend and working in a bigoted industry,” Sonny said under his breath, reaching one hand up to massage his now-sore neck.

“One,” Rafael held up a single finger, “I hate the word boyfriend.” Sonny smiled, small but genuine. “And two, you’re not losing you job. I keep telling you.”

“And  _ I  _ keep telling  _ you  _ that it’s not that simple. There was a policy, Rafael. I knew that. I violated that. That’s not why I’m mad.”

“It should be. That policy is complete and total bullshit.”

“Well, there’s one thing we can both agree on fully.”

“Which is exactly why you can’t just let them win. You can’t just roll over and let them do this.”

“Winning? Rafael, do you hear yourself? It’s not a game!” Sonny’s voice sounded shrill, even to him, but he couldn’t shift it. “They didn’t force me out. I chose to leave. I’m not gonna go hide in the kitchen like I did something wrong. I love you, and fuck them if that now makes me unfit, somehow.”

Rafael’s jaw dropped, and Sonny just rolled his eyes in response. It wasn’t how he would have chosen to say it for the first time, but you can’t put the rabbit back in the bag. He wasn’t the most obvious person in the world, but Rafael was no moron. 

“You can’t do that,” Rafael repeated, his voice small. “You can’t quit your job for me.” Rafael pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned. “You can’t. I’m sorry. You just - you can’t.” Rafael was standing, pacing the small distance between his desk and Sonny’s seat at the conference table. His hands were balling into fists repeatedly, relaxing just long enough for them to clench again, tighter, knuckles white already.

He was still shaking his head, faster now, and was beginning to mutter to himself under his breath, as if he’d managed to forget Sonny was even in the room anymore. On his next pass near Sonny’s chair, the other man reached out a gentle hand and tried to pull him to a stop, but Rafael pulled away again, his eyes wide in panic as an actual hiss escaped through his teeth.  “Grow up.”

Sonny reeled like he’d been slapped. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Rafael practically ran back across the room, dropping to the floor in front of Sonny’s chair. He ran his hands through his hair, knocking lose his well-manicured hair, the added dishevelment working with the panic in his eyes to prickle beads of cold sweat underneath Sonny’s collar. “Please. Sonny. Don’t you see it? Adults don’t do that. You can’t just quit your job for me without talking to me. I can’t, we can’t handle that.”

“You keep saying I did this for you, but don’t you get what it would have been like for me to keep working there? Fuck Stone, and Liv, and the pictures - maybe it’s on me for letting them find out to begin with. But do you really expect me to walk into a place every day where they hate what I am, where they want to punish me for it?”

The scoff that came out of Rafael’s mouth was ugly, so bitter Sonny could taste it from where he sat. “Like I said, Sonny - grow up.”

“I can’t believe you’d ask me to do that.”

“I can’t believe you don’t think I get a vote when you’re throwing your life away for me.”

“Drama queen,” Sonny sneered. It wasn’t the first time he’d called Rafael that, but it was the first time that he’d meant it, that it hadn’t been a gentle tease, whispered nonsense as Rafael lamented cold toes against warm calves or the pointlessness of the penny. Today, it reeked with vitriol, with the kind of honesty we call jokes because it makes the blunt force of it all easier to absorb.

“The last time I let someone put their entire life out on a limb for me, it almost destroyed both of us and my daughter in the process.” He met Sonny’s eyes, and a chill passed down his spine, cold and foreboding. “I can’t do that again. I can’t let someone else do that again. You  _ can’t  _ quit your job for me, don’t you get it? How big that is? That will  _ break me _ , and I just put myself back together.”

Sonny felt a flash of anger, and suddenly the pit opening slowly beneath him became starkly apparent. It made sense, all of it, the back of his mind filling in blanks that suddenly made so much sense. “YOU put yourself back together? Oh. I forgot. You did that, all you and just you, right? Stupid Sonny, here I was thinking that I had a part in that, that you were letting me to your life, what do I know. You picked up all those pieces, doesn’t matter at all that you couldn’t have done it without me, that you were a hot fucking mess when I met you.”

“At least I let my mess be hot. You wanna talk, Carisi, let’s talk.” It’d been so long since he’d heard his last name in Rafael’s mouth, since he’d been pushed back towards to that removed place, on opposite sides of an unnamed no-man’s land. “You never wanted to be a preschool teacher, why are you acting like this is the thing that ruined your life? Know what I think?”

Sonny shook his head, sorely tempted to put his fingers in his ears and hum. He felt the smallest buzz of anticipatory anger come alive under his skin, his fingers itching and his ears buzzing as his mind went completely still, soaking up each of Rafael’s words like a sponge. 

“I think you don’t know what you want to do. That you spent so much of your life trying to live up to the name you were given that, now that he’s gone, you’re just as lost as I was. Am. Just because you don’t drown your demons in drink…” Rafael drifted off and didn’t speak again until Sonny finally met his eyes. “I think your dad would be ashamed of you, Sonny, for running scared.”

Sonny was out of his chair before he had the chance to think, his hands on Rafael’s shoulders as he pushed violently. Rafael stumbled out of his crouch, crashing to his ass, his mouth hardened into a line as he rocketed to his feet, his face a dark red, deepening towards purple.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Sonny said through clenched teeth, the veins in his neck popping as he did his best to take a full breath and force his fingers to relax. “You didn’t know him. You don’t get to speak about him. And I’m not the one running scared, Rafael. One of us in this room already said ‘I love you’.”

Rafael laughed, once, short and hollow. “So the fuck what. What are you going to do, Sonny?” Rafael stepped forward, invading Sonny’s space, pressing him back towards the door of Rafael’s office. “You think saying what you said makes it okay? Look at you now, you gonna hit me?”

“If I did would it make you believe that I love you? Nah, Rafi. That’s your family. Not mine.”

He was quiet when he said it, but it didn’t matter. He might as well have shouted in Rafael’s face, for the depth of the silence that followed.

“Get out.”

Rafael brushed past Sonny and pulled the door open with enough force Sonny half expected it to rip the hinges off the jamb.

Panic gripped at him, and Sonny had to reach a hand out to steady himself on the desk. Blood rushed through his ears and black spots swam at the edges of his vision. He heard every word he’d spoken since walking into the office, played back to him in slow motion. 

Time froze, Sonny’s heart along with it, as his world came crashing down around his ears. He couldn’t help but lunge forward, putting his hands on either side of Rafael’s face, desperate to rewind. To take it back. To slow things down so he could figure exactly where it was things had started down this path. But Rafael twisted out of his grip, slapping at Sonny’s hands halfheartedly until they fell and, without a word, Sonny stepped through the doorway. 

He turned one last time, words of apology on the tip of his tongue, and was met with dark, solid oak paneling inches from his face.

He hadn’t heard the door slam, but he felt it. In the slow turn of his shoulders, in the pointed way Carmen couldn’t bring herself to look at him as he trudged past her desk in a daze, in the thin layer of cotton that seemed to wrap around him and settle heavy on his senses, making everything fuzzy as he made his way home. Fuzzy was better than the sharp pain that lingered just beyond the barrier, the beast at bay.

Instead, he unlocked the door and collapsed onto his bed, pulling the covers over his head and shutting his eyes until his ears stopped ringing, the rush of blood in his ears stilled, and he slept.    
  



	12. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there, friends! 
> 
> For all of you who have continued reading: thank you for sticking with me.
> 
> For my fandom family: thank you for putting up with me.
> 
> For AHumanFemale: there are no words for the gratitude I have for your consistent support, encouragement, and sheer amount of talent. Thank you for Tessa, for writing the entirety of her scene here and letting me borrow her to begin with. None of this - literally none of it - would be possible without you.

Time has always been a fickle thing. We break it down into segments we all agree make sense - 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour. But they are numbers and words signifying nothing, largely agreed upon to be the functional units by which the value of a productive life is measured. 

Sonny Carisi had joined the ranks for whom the Earth’s axis has shifted, rending the fabric of time itself until it became something else entirely. Hours were no longer composed of minutes, but the number of dust motes he would watch float through the shafts of light escaping around the shut curtains.

Gone were the days made of concrete hours, replaced with the foul stench of sweat-soaked sheets and a stomach hollow of food but heavy with a residual guilt he couldn’t seem to digest.

He unplugged his phone and let the battery die. When he ran out of quarters for his laundry, he simply stopped doing it. Food dwindled in his fridge, and when the delivery guy arrived it was to strict instructions to leave the food and take the cash, which he’d conveniently already shoved under the mat.

Sitting in the dark of his apartment, Sonny was unmoored. He’d lost his job. He’d lost his father. He’d lost Rafael, although that felt more like a throwing away than is did a losing. No matter what he did, he couldn’t shake his own voice from his ears, the bitter way he’d thrown some of Rafael’s darkest secrets back in his face. 

He couldn’t bring himself to think about the things Rafael had said to him.

Rafael’s words had torn open something inside Sonny, a raw and ragged wound that he couldn’t get to near without  rearing back in almost incapacitating pain. He knew the longer he stayed away from it, the worse it would be when the time finally came to clean and suture the wound. But when have we ever been inclined to do the right thing when the right thing was bound to hurt so damn much?

“Come on, Son, it can’t be as bad as all that,” Bella said, sitting as close to him as she physically could on the small couch, despite his best efforts to pull away. She’d stood outside his building and buzzed for almost half an hour, until Mrs. Zarkanian next door pounded on his door so hard the chain rattled and told him she’d call the cops if he didn’t let that poor sweet girl up to see him. 

Once inside, she hadn’t said anything. 

She pulled him close, pressing his ear to the space just above her heart, and after a few beats, when he still didn’t relax, she let him go. He pulled further into himself, tucking all of his limbs into an an impossibly small amount of space and staring out a window he couldn’t see through because he refused to open the blinds, still.

“You have no idea how bad it is, Bells.” And that was all he said to her, until hours later she pulled a pan of lasagna from the oven and set it on the counter for him, kissing him on the top of his head and walking out. 

He slept on that couch that night, in the same place he’d been for a week, the couch molding around his body in a way that comforted him at the same time it drove him even deeper into his sadness.

*

“Well, this is total bullshit,” Teresa said, charging past Sonny before he had the chance to shut the door in her face. She’d snuck in behind his Thai food, and he didn’t want to think about that particular order of events. “This is gross, little brother.”

“Rees, not now.” He didn’t sound tired. He didn’t sound like much of anything. It was an absence that tore at Teresa, but she could only do what she did best - boss her little brother around for his own good. 

“Of course now. You think I’m just gonna let you rot in here like this? Now help, or get out of my way.”

He didn’t help. He didn’t get out of her way either. In a fit of petulance, he sat down in the middle of the couch and refused to move, even as the whirling dirvish that was his sister washed, dusted, and opened windows all around him. He didn’t have the strength to fight her as she pulled back curtains and he flinched instinctually at the bright sunlight filling his apartment.

“Jesus, Sonny.” She crossed to the couch and took his chin in her hands. He attempted half-heartedly to pull away, from the force of her grip and the pity in her eye. “What did he do to you? Look at you. Two weeks and you’re a vampire.”

Sonny closed his eyes and spoke through gritted teeth. “Shut up.”

Teresa didn’t let go, merely lifting her eyebrow in a way that reminded him so sharply of Rafael that he hissed in a breath like it was a physical blow, unable to wrench out of her grip fast enough to hide the sudden prick of tears behind his eyes. But Teresa had been there his entire life, and knew exactly what it looked like when her dear, sweet, stupid brother was trying his hardest to hide his soft parts.

“Hey,” she said, sinking next to him on the couch and pulling his shoulder until he turned to face her, still unable to meet her in the eye as he sniffled and willed the crimson out of his cheeks. “You know he’s just some  _ mezza sega stronzo _ , right?”

Sonny almost choked on his next breath, the noise that came out of him half laugh and half sob. His body shook as the sustained tension under his muscles beneath to release, the laugh-sobs stacking on top of each other until he collapsed his weight into Teresa, resting his head on her shoulder as he wiped at his face.

“He’s really not,” he said in to the warm quiet of the room once he’d managed to quiet himself. “I know it’s easy to hate him. But he’s really not.”

“Yeah. Well.” And she made a huffing noise and sank deeper into the couch, pulling Sonny under her arm. “I still get to hate him.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Sonny said quietly, and they sat together like that until the the sunlight was gone, the apartment bleached to shades of grey and navy as dusk set in. 

*

“You don’t even need me anymore, do you?!”

If all of his energy hadn’t just been wiped out by the week’s first attempt at a shower, he might have laughed. As it was, he just wrapped long arms around Gina’s shoulders and pulled her over the threshold, planting a loud kiss to her temple.

“Good to see you, Gina.”

She squeezed him hard enough that he grunted, but she just continued to squeeze, until he patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and gently pushed her back. She looked at him intently, her blue eyes serious. “I’m serious. You look...better. I can go.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he pushed her gently down the hallway towards his living room. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re lucky you caught me after a shower.”

“Yeah, Bells said you weren’t lookin’ too good.”

Sonny just shrugged and sank into the couch, opposite the corner where he’d lived almost the last month of his life. It was a small change, but the distance between one cushion and the next was, for Sonny, the distance between an old life and a new one. He ran a hand through his damp hair and looked pointedly from the remote on the table to Gina, who was still standing tentatively behind the couch, looking at Sonny like he might break. Like one wrong move would shatter this new, clean person back to zero - and shit, for all he knew, maybe she was right.

“Are you okay, Sonny?”

He didn’t want to answer the hurt in her voice. Or, he didn’t want to have to lie to her, and he hated to hurt her, so didn’t want to give her an answer, which he supposed amounted to the same thing.

“So. Atlanta or Orange County?”

Gina just crossed her arms and leveled a stare at him. He stared back, crossing his own arms, settling back for a stand-off familiar to him from years of sibling battles. 

“Sonny,” her tone warned.

“Gina,” he answered back, his tone the same, with the added edge of mockery. 

“Are. You. Okay?”

He sighed heavily and looked at his lap, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in a tiny ‘ _ I surrender’ _ gesture. He noticed the small smile of triumph that flitted across her face, but she wisely didn’t say anything. After a pause, he looked up at her, doing his best to keep his face calm.

“No. I am not. But right now, I am clean, and I am about to be fed, and I really like that you are here. So please, for the love of God, Geen - Atlanta or Orange County?”

She stared at him for another minute, something behind her gaze shifting from stubborn to concerned. With a brief nod of her head, she grabbed the remote and plopped next to Sonny on the couch.

“Neither. We’re like two seasons behind on New York, and Bethenny is back-”

“No, not New York. Please. Gina. I can’t.”

And something about the pain underlying the attempted levity cut into Gina, and she barely managed to contain a wince. Instead, she paused for a moment, hesitating between their remaining options.

“New Jersey?” Her voice was tentative, as though the wrong suggestion would be the rock through the glass.

He chewed on his lip and thought. Possibly too close to home, but those seasons had always been his favorite, and it had been a while since he’d watched The Table Flip.

“New Jersey,” he said decidedly, sinking back and letting the familiar opening lines wash over him, his sister a warm and comforting weight alongside him. They watched through pizza, through a late-night ice cream delivery, through two and a half seasons, a sunrise, and pop-tarts for breakfast.

They watched so much, and for long, that for the first time in a month Sonny didn’t realize it was a weeknight, didn’t long for a phantom good-night phone call and the scattered thoughts of a tired toddler that weren’t going to come. 

*

For all her volunteer work and Sunday school teaching and Saturday morning bake sales, Tessa Carisi had one helluva side eye. 

It was a facet of her only known by her inner circle - her sisters and best friend from second grade - and by her family.  Her kids, mostly, because Sonny had never once seen her level the withering look on her husband. The one now trained firmly on Sonny as he washed the dishes from their Sunday lunch and she dried.  It was the first time he’d been out of the house in a while and for a little while everything felt normal enough to hide the fact that his world had imploded. 

Almost. 

Almost, because his mother was now staring him down and he could already see the words forming on her lips. 

_ You’re too thin.  _

Or, a perennial favorite and ultimate harbinger of doom,  _ I was talking to your sisters earlier and… _

“Have you been eating?”

He sighed, looking skyward for strength.  

“You just watched me eat two plates of manicotti, Ma.”

“Are you eating on your own?”

He paused, letting the bowl in his hand run under the hot water. 

“Sure.”

“Good food?”

“ _ Good _ is probably relative,” he admitted and handed her another dish.  “I’ve probably had more MSG in the last few days than I have in my entire life.”

“That’s not good for you,” she admonished, lips pursed into a fine line.  When she placed the plate onto the drying rack it was with an air of frustration.  “So… is this it? You’re going to just wither away?”

Sonny scoffed.  “In what world am I withering, Ma?” 

“Just because you’re fed doesn’t mean you’re sustained,” she snapped and for the first time he heard the threat of temper in her voice. “I raised you better.  Carisis don’t give up.”

“I didn’t give up so much as I burned everything in my general vicinity,” he said quietly.  

Rafael’s face appeared behind his eyes and he cringed away from it, the sight stinging like salt on a wound.

He had nothing left to give up on. 

“I thought this was about your job,” his mother observed and used the back of her hand to push away an errant strand of tawny hair streaked with gray.  “Is this about the person you’re seeing?”

Breath aching in his chest, he first paused and then nodded. 

“ _ Was  _ seeing,” he corrected, if only to punish himself.  “Not anymore.”

Sonny had hoped to keep this to himself - knowing already how cruel he’d been, how unlike himself - but it seemed the time of polite tiptoeing around his grief had passed. 

“Because?”

Leave it to his mother to rip off the bandaid.

“I, uh.”  He cleared his throat, braced his hands on the lip of the sink and looked down.  “I said things to him. We said things to each other, I guess. But I...I took it too far. Hurt him. Used his secrets against him.”

Sonny went on, giving her the gist of the argument.  What he said, what Rafael said. A brief snippet of the history Rafael had shared with him - the knowledge that made what Sonny had thrown at him so horrible.  When it was done shame had curled acidic in his throat and he had a hard time meeting his mother’s eyes. 

Silence reigned and he could feel the weight of his mother's disappointment on his shoulders, the cherry on top of a truly miserable sundae.  

At least until he felt the rough glance of a slap against the back of his head. 

“Ow!  Ma!”

“That’s for being awful, and be thankful my arm’s already tired.”

“You gonna hit him too?!”

“If I see him.”

“Jeez,” he murmured and rubbed his hand over the negligible sting.  Sting soothed entirely away when she stood on her toes and pressed a kiss into his hair.  Briefly he was five again, running to her when he tried to play baseball with the older boys and got roughed up in the process. 

“Hush. You’re fine,” she said and set down her drying towel to lean one ample hip on the counter.  “Sonny, you’re my son and I love you more than life itself.”

“I feel a ‘but’ coming.”

“But you’re a loaded suitcase of emotions and it’s about time you sorted out your baggage,” she told him matter-of-factly while Sonny gaped.  “God knows I miss your father. I miss him so much I can’t breathe sometimes. But the last thing he would want me doing is freezing up. Living in that grief forever and never moving forward.  And I’ll bet you anything he’d feel the same way about you.”

Sonny’s throat threatened to close, emotion welling up.  

Her voice softened, growing distant. “That man had so much love, Sonny, for all of you. You think he didn’t give you some of that, along with his name? So go on.  Do something. Get a new job, get a new man. Get the same man back, if that’s something you want to do,” she continued, “But  _ do something _ .  You may have lost your father, but make no mistake - the rest of this you gave up on your own.  And it’s up to you to do something about it.”

His cheeks colored and he nodded slowly.  

“Alright, Ma,” he sighed, “Alright.” 

*

The conversation with Tessa happened not a moment too soon. His carefully acquired savings were depleting at what seemed to be six times the rate it had accrued, and even Mr. Pomadoro wasn’t going to let him keep sliding on rent for forever, no matter how much moonlighting as a handyman he offered to do. 

That didn’t make his first steps back into the real world any easier, however, and did nothing to scrub away the thin layer of cotton that seemed intent on never leaving it’s stranglehold of his nerves.

He’d known Teresa had been joking when she’d called him a vampire all those weeks ago, but the truth was - the first steps out of his building were painful. The sun felt too bright, yes, but the street also seemed too loud, the colors too jarring and the heat too heavy, even though they were still weeks away from the start of any proper summer. 

Sonny made it as far as the coffee shop on the next corner over before he just couldn't anymore, and he ducked into the cool, coffee-scented shade of the shop and felt instantly at home. It was the mix of espresso and flour, the way warm light reflected off scuffed, worn wood, the kind of lived-in furniture that seemed universal amongst small cafes. He ordered a double-shot americano and a cannoli, which the sign at the register said were filled fresh to order. 

The next day, he had two to go with his latte, and by the end of the week the owner - a big man named Sal and his wife, Sally, which Sonny thought wise not to comment on after the look they shot him the first day - was showing him his secret to a not-to-sweet biscotti filling (as if Sonny didn’t already have decades of knowledge on the subject). When he suggested adding pieces of candied lemon rind to the top of Sal’s lemon-ricotta cannoli, you’d have thought he spit on the Pope - and yet there it was the next week, and Sally gave him two huge kisses, yelling about how they’d been selling out for days and would he like to come and work with Sal in the kitchen? 

So he started. Just a few days a week, at first, pre-dawn  bakery prep and after-lunch hours at the counter, well after the lunch rush, as he learned the ins and outs of the coffee business. He took to it like a fish to water, surprising even himself as he turned his home-taught baking skills and set of dimples into a pretty steady flow of tips and a beloved status among the cafe’s solid rotation of regulars. 

It wasn’t a career, but it was an income, and every day that passed left him feeling a little more comfortable in his new life, like he was standing on the deck of a ship finally coming back to rights after a storm. The only people he saw were the locals at work, the few more extroverted neighbors in his building, and his family. 

After a week working at the coffee shop, he ran into an old housemate from Fordham, and after a few hours talking to Jamie, he had an email drafted to the admissions department. Maybe there wasn’t a way for Fordham to look past the time he’d taken, but the person on the other end of the email chain seemed excited to accommodate where they could, and patient honesty where they couldn’t. It was a toe back in the life he’d left so casually, but it already felt as if his compass was rediscovering magnetic north.

He was almost able to forget entirely that he’d ever been a preschool teacher, that Olivia, Jack, Peter, and Daniela ever existed, and weren’t just figures of an imagined life, slowly fading into the muted greys and navies of the past. 

If only Rafael would join them there.

But Rafael had never exactly struck Sonny as the type to fall in line, and so there he was. In his dreams, the heavy weight on his palms and the steady creep of thick fingers up the sensitive inner thighs rocketing him awake, panting. On the streets, in every crisp line of a french cuff or a paisley tie on a contrasting color. He was even in the silence of the coffee shop, in a whiff of freshly roasted coffee combining with a particular brand of vanilla to create a scent that made Sonny’s head rocket towards the door. Not that he was ever there. 

Then there were the times when he didn’t see Rafael’s face, but instead heard his voice, wrapped in the ice and bitterness of that final argument. No matter how hard he tried, he could never hear any of the other times they talked, the late-night banter and whispered affection. Only ever the hate, the anger, the regret. And there he was, his own voice in response, ugly and dark. Those were the dreams he could never break out of, their voices echoing and intertwining until Sonny was trapped in an echochamber of anger and he woke with his hands in his hair, his scalp sore from pulling.

Once, when he was still young enough to think that lighters were the coolest invention on the planet, he’d burned the pad of his thumb bad enough to blister. No matter how many times his doctors yelled at him - and Tessa put soap under his nails - he couldn’t stop sticking his thumb in his mouth and running his incisor along the edges of the blister. It hurt, but the more he did it, the less it hurt, the more he did it.  

That’s what he did now, running his mind around and around memories and images of Rafael, submerging himself in them rather than continuing to try and run. It was like his own twisted form of exposure therapy, and when it didn’t work, he double down and tried harder.

One Wednesday, almost a month and a half after the breakup, Sonny thought maybe he’d managed to summon the man’s name into everyone else’s head, too. Why else would Sally be asking him about a man named Rafael, who ordered more coffee than could possibly be healthy for one person and whose expression had turned from hopeful to menacing the moment he’d managed a look around the small space. 

“Asked him what was wrong, said he was looking for someone who was supposed to be here. Assumed he meant Sarah, but he disappeared pretty quickly when I offered to go grab her from the back.”

Sonny was grateful he’d just gotten back from a bodega run, as it put him in the direct vicinity of a chair to sink in to. His vision swam, and his chest felt too tight to take a proper breath.

Rafael had been there. Looking for him. 

He wasn’t sure if he was glad to have missed him, or more bitter than ever at the lost opportunity to see him again. He decided quickly that it didn’t matter, and with a wave over his shoulder and the fewest number of words he could manage, he explained to Sal and Sally that he’d need the rest of the day off.

*

“Sonny, please.”

“Carmen. Come on.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t. All I  _ can  _ tell you is that he’s not here.”

“He’s not here because he left to see me, and because the Universe is an asshole I somehow beat him back here. Please?”

Carmen bit the inside of her cheek, looking quickly back and forth between the closed door of Rafael’s office and Sonny’s bare-to-the-surface desperation. Seeming to make up her mind about something, she nodded once, sharply, before looking Sonny full in the face, her eyes shuttered behind a professional propriety he’d never seen from her before.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carisi. I would be happy to let Mr. Barba know you stopped by, but at the moment he was out of the office and I am unsure of when he’ll return.”

Sonny just stared at her for a moment, slack-jawed, before he mirror her quick head movement and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“That won’t be necessary, Carmen. Please don’t mention this to Mr. Barba.” He turned on his heel and walked back the way he’d come with all the dignity of a king leaving court.

 

 

If Rafael was looking for him, but Carmen was stonewalling him, that just mean he’d have to get creative. 

Luckily for Sonny, creativity and coffee were two things he had in ample supply at the moment.  


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *taps mic* Is this thing on?
> 
> Well, here's the penultimate chapter! 
> 
> I promise it won't be five months before the final chapter.
> 
> This is entirely unbetaed, entirely my fault, and to each and every one of you who has read and checked in: thank you, this wouldn't have happened without you. Period.
> 
> Remember to tip your fic writer in the form of kudos/comments!

“You have to tell me.”

“Have to?”

In a gesture he’d seen come to know well over the course of their friendship, Olivia tented her fingers, elbows on the desk in front of her, eyes cooly taking him apart. She was better than a lot of the lawyers he’d come across - and he would know, because so was he. 

Rafael Barba didn’t easily admit defeat. You couldn’t be short, mouthy, and Cuban in the Bronx without developing a hell of a lot of fight. But in that moment, sitting across from Olivia, he felt the energy drain out of him completely. He had a dozen compelling reasons she owed him the information he needed, but each and every one slipped through his fingers like sand. 

He exhaled heavily and pulled at the knot of his tie, as though loosening the fabric around his neck would loosen the cold band of steal that had taken up residence around his heart. He opened his mouth - to ask, to beg, he didn’t know - but closed it again when nothing came.

“Oh, Rafa.” The combination of pity and light condemnation raked at his skin like shards of ice, and for a moment he felt a flash of rage. At this place, at her, at the way his life had been knocked off a course he’d never planned for to begin with. But, like all his feelings of late, it was gone in an instant, leaving behind nothing but afterburn and ash. “What happened?”

He didn’t look good, and he knew it. His normally straight lines and dapper patterns had been overrun with wrinkles in drab browns and grays; his bulletproof courtroom performances veering close to L1 quality, and a poor L1 at that. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep; Rafael Barba had gone his entire adult life on what several doctors had called an unsustainable amount of sleep. It was that never once, in the course of everything, had he so deeply just not cared. 

He dropped his chin to his chest and shrugged, unsure of where to start. “After what happened with Peter-”

Olivia cleared her throat pointedly, and Rafael’s head shot up, confusion in his eyes. “You know I can’t talk about another parent with you.”

“You asked,” he snapped.

“Not about that.” Her tone softened. “I’m sorry, Rafa. Just - what happened after he left here? He was so upset…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at him expectantly. He took a deep breath.

If Rafael could have easily explained to her the series of events, he would have. But he’d gone over that brief hour of his life so many times, tumbled it through every corner of his mind so often, that it was as smooth and impenetrable as seaglass, and just as impossible to see through. He didn’t know what happened, so he told her what he could remember instead. 

“He came to see me right after...everything. And he was just, he was manic. I’ve never seen him like that before. He kept pacing, I couldn’t get him to slow down and just talk to me. And then he did. He told me about,” Rafael swallowed, his throat thick with rage and remembered violation, the feeling of hearing about his intimacy violated without his knowledge, knowing that someone he disliked so thoroughly had stooped to such vile levels to accomplish nothing more than hurting him and his patient, loving, unbearingly kind Sonny. He waited until the roiling in his stomach passed before speaking again. “He told me about your conversation, and when I encouraged him to find a way to speak to you, he, he just flipped out. Began to insist that the job didn’t have anything to do with it, that he was doing...whatever he was doing for me, and I wasn’t asking him to do that. I wasn’t going to let him do that, not without talking to me about it first. So-so I told him he was running.”

The shame filled his mouth like fire and glass, bringing tears to his eyes and his breath short in his lungs. His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper now, and he wasn’t speaking to Olivia. Not really. He was speaking to a place in himself that hadn’t been allowed to look at that day since it happened. Since he’d slammed the door behind Sonny and, he’d thought, locked his heart along with it. “I told him he was running from his dad, from his grief, and that his dad would be ashamed of him.” He heard Olivia inhale, short and sharp. “And he got so, so angry. And then he said. He said-” Rafael’s exhale trembled so hard he was amazed he got oxygen out of his lungs. He couldn’t, might never be able to make his mouth form the words that had come out of Sonny’s mouth. “-things. About my dad, and our family, and I threw him out.”

For the first time since he sat down, he forced himself to hold eye contact with Olivia. He needed her to understand. “I threw him out, Liv. In anger. No goodbye. No thank you for all the things he’d done. No anything. And now I don’t know where to find him. I can’t leave it like that.”

Olivia stared at him for a long time, watching him intently. Some distant part of himself recognized that this entire conversation had gone off the rails. That when he’d so brazenly entered her office early, confident in finding out where, exactly, he could find Sonny Carisi, he hadn’t anticipated pouring out his heart at her desk while barely holding back sobs. But man plans, God laughs, and they were where they were.

Whatever it was she saw in Rafael’s eyes, it must have been a satisfactory answer. She leaned forward and plucked a pad of post-its off the front of her desk, scribbling something while she spoke. “There was a problem getting Sonny his last paycheck. His sister ended up coming to grab it, and when she was here, she may have mentioned something about the new place Sonny was working.”

She held the post-it out to him and he snatched so fast it snapped, the sound sharp in the space between them. A single name, Sal’s, and a cross-street that put it not all that far from Sonny’s apartment. He gripped the scrap of paper like it was his near-perfect LSAT score, the diploma he’d received from Harvard Law, and Daniela’s birth certificate, all at once. He stood without a word, that single word, Sal’s, running over and over in his mind. He made it all the way to the doorway before he remembered that he wasn’t quite done talking yet.

He turned, hand on the door handle, and met Olivia’s eyes again. “Thank you, Olivia.”

She nodded, worrying at her lip with her teeth for a beat before she spoke, quick and quiet. “I’m so sorry, Rafael. I didn’t want any of this to happen like that. The kids, the parents - most of the people here loved Sonny. And I know you did too. I never meant, never wanted-” she shut her mouth with a snap, so quickly Rafael was surprised she hadn’t bitten her tongue. “Tell him that, when you see him? That I never wanted any of this to happen like this.”

Rafael nodded, once, and then the door was open and he was stepping through it, his brain already several steps ahead in the plan. He might never be able to forgive this wretched school for what they’d done, but he and Olivia had been friends for a long time. And, with this, he began to hope they might be friends for a long time coming. 

**

It looked like Sonny.

The worn brick was half-covered in ivy, a blanket of green so deep it was almost blue, glistening with dew in the dawn light. It was a place that radiated comfort, the kind of place you could slip into like home from the very first moment. It tightened the steel band around Rafael’s stomach, the thought that it had taken everything they’d gone through to put Sonny back in a place he belonged. 

And then, like the very thought of him summoned him into being, Sonny Carisi turned the corner. Rafael hissed in a breath and ducked, as though he’d be spotted from his spot in the back of an Uber, several rows back in the parking lot diagonal to the cafe. He slammed down the voice screaming that he deserved to be caught, that what he was doing was the worst kind of privacy violation and stalker behavior that he had ever exhibited. He wasn’t stalking. He was figuring it out, figuring out where Sonny had gone and if he was okay. Which, clearly, he was. 

From where he was sitting, he couldn’t make out much, but he could see the broadness of Sonny’s back as he unlocked the front door, the way his chin tilted up without thinking, his nose already rooting out the smells of coffee in the air. Rafael didn’t need to see it to know the liquid smile that was spreading across the other man’s face. Once upon a time, he’d seen it all the time. Once the door was shut behind Sonny, Rafael gave the bored twentysomething kid in the front seat directions to his office, slipping him a generous tip for the wait. The kid shrugged and pulled out of the parking lot, maneuvering into the morning traffic.

By the time he walked into his office, Rafael’s mood resettled into its most recent state of aggravated exhaustion, and he threw his briefcase on his desk so hard it slid across the expanse of wood and clattered to the ground, taking an unfortunately full cup of pens and his lamp with it. 

“Maldición,” he said, louder than he should have, sitting down in his desk chair and pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He needed to get it together, and these morning trips out to Staten Island and back weren’t helping.

“You can’t keep doing this, you know.” Carmen crossed her arms and leaned against the frame of the door he could have sworn he’d closed. She looked at him with that knowing look of pity and fond annoyance that drove Rafael the most mad. He waved a hand at her and pulled a legal pad towards him on the desk, reaching for a pen before he realized that his entire collection was scattered across the hardwood. He stood and unbuttoned the sleeves of his burgundy dress shirt, beginning to roll the sleeves as he bent to pick the pens up off the floor. 

“Are you going to help me?”

“I am helping you,” she crossed to his desk and perched on his desk, watching him.

“What are you doing, Mr. Barba?”

He stilled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve been late every day this week, you’ve missed meeting without Rita and Buchanan, which normally wouldn’t be a red flag except that you missed perfectly good opportunities to send condescending rescheduling emails. Plus there’s the part where you’re still in love with Sonny and refusing to do anything about it.”

He practically swallowed his tongue, rocketing to his feet and running a hand through his hair, the other coming to rest in his pocket as he stared at her. “You’re aware that’s maybe the most direct thing you’ve ever said to me?”

She gave him a half-shrug before running her hands along the corner of a stack of briefs, the ruffling sound filling the silence. “I’m aware. I’m also aware that, while not friends necessarily, it’s my job to help you take care of your life both in and-” she met his eyes “-without of the office.” There was a question there, a boundary line they were still sketching out, and Rafael nodded tentatively, coming to perch beside her on the desk, arms crossed across his chest.

He kept his gaze trained on the floor when he spoke. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Nope.”

“I can’t see him anymore. I need to let him go.”

“Nope.”

That got his attention. “No?!”

“Mr. Barba, I heard the things he said to you. Well. Some of the things. And I heard some of the things you said to him. I think you need to talk to him. Don’t tell me ADA Rafael Barba is afraid of a little verbal sparring.”

Rafael swallowed past the lump in his throat, willing the heat in his face to die down before he spoke again. “Last time wasn’t exactly sparring so much as it was a surprise cage match. I’m not afraid,” his voice dripped with unintentional disdain at the word, although he wasn’t sure that the feeling that poured through him wasn’t a darker shade of fear than he’d known before. “I’m just trying to be fair to the both of us.”

Carmen nodded, glancing at Rafael out of the corner of her eyes before she clicked her tongue in a way that reminded him of his mother. She pushed off his desk and crossed to the door back to her desk, turning with a hand on the knob. “If being in this office has taught me anything it’s that the only unfair thing is to not take the chance at the fight. Get out of the car next time, Mr. Barba.” 

The door clicked shut behind her and the silence that filled Rafael’s office was deafening. He sank back into his office chair, pens and briefcase forgotten. He chewed on the edge of his thumb absently, spinning his chair from left to right as his brain raced desperately to arrange the facts in front of him into a coherent narrative. He sorted and resorted every factor — the first time Sonny had been unable to pull his eyes away from Rafael’s hands, the relief he’d felt in his gut when he’d opened his door to find Sonny with medicine in hand to save both he and his daughter, the ripples of pain that slammed through them both when he dismissed Sonny’s choices and Sonny threw his history in his face in the cruelest way possible. He was one of the best lawyers in the state, and up until he’d met Sonny he’d have said that was all he was. But even he couldn’t make sense of the case in front of him, didn’t know how to argue for the desired outcome.

Because he didn’t know.

The thought didn’t so much as it appeared, like the scene in a horror movie where the flashlight pans across a dark, empty room only to scan back the other way and land it’s bright light on the hidden killer. Not there, and then there.

Rafael couldn’t put together the puzzle if he didn’t have all the pieces. He just needed to do a little bit more discovery. He practically jumped out of his chair, opening the door with enough force that it bounced off the wall behind it. Luckily, it was still just Carmen at her desk.

“I need you to call Sonny for me.”

She looked at him for a long minute before going back to the stack of files on her desk. “No.”

“No? You’re my secretary. I need you to place this call.”

“I don’t think the DA’s office will object to my refusal to make your personal calls,” she cut him a shrewd look. “Besides, this is something you need to do. Both of you. Face to face. It’s none of my business.”

“I can’t just leave the office all day-”

“I took the liberty of clearing your schedule until tomorrow, which I will have you know audibly pissed off the Buchanan clerk.” A smile crept across her face as she spoke, and when she looked at him again her eyes sparkled. “You’re just lucky SVU is between cases right now.”

He just stared at her, dumbfounded. After a beat, she shooed him away from her desk and he made his way to the elevator in a daze, making a reservation for yet another car back to Staten Island as his mind retraced the steps that had led him to being so thoroughly handled by Carmen.

**

“You sure there’s nothing I can help you with, sir? Best cannoli this side of the bridge,” the plump man said from behind the counter, and Rafael’s mind raced. He’d been so confident when he’d walked in, having used the entire car to practice version after version of the same speech. The “we need to talk but I swear it’s not because I want you back, necessarily,” speech. The speech that required Sonny Carisi to actually be present for. 

The cafe was exactly as cozy on the inside as he’d thought it looked on the outside. Wrought-iron tables and tall tapers filled the worn wooden floor, the counter flanked on either side with cases promising New York bagels, paninis, cannoli, zeppoli, and a dozen other sorts of fried breads. Rafael’s mouth watered, and the strong smell of espresso that seemed to be pumped through the vents itself wasn’t helping. He’d been to a lot of coffee shops in his life; he wanted to live here. 

He cleared his throat. “No, I was just looking. For someone. They’re supposed to be here.”

The man looked him up and down and smiled warmly. “You must be one of Sarah’s gents. Let me go to the back and grab her for you.”

“No!” He shouted, his voice too loud in the small space. The man’s smile faltered, but he didn’t move from his spot behind the register. He held up two hands like he was mid-robbery. Rafael blushed and backtracked, straightening his tie and trying again. “No, it’s okay. I’m just not looking for Sarah, and wouldn’t want you to bother her. I’ll just come back later.” He turned and did his best not to run for the door. As soon as he was outside, he decided not to call yet another car back to the city. He decided to take a cab, and then to take the ferry. One last time to say goodbye to Staten Island and the tall, blonde, too-good almost-family man that lived there.

**

It was past dark when Rafael finally got back to his apartment, one of the rare days where he let his feet take him wherever they wanted to in the city. It had been late afternoon by the time he’d actually gotten back to the city, and from there he’d wandered. Dinner from a cart, the dark purple haze of twilight that seemed to settle in Central Park in a way that it didn’t anywhere else in the world. Inside his dress shoes, his feet were aching, and he’d sweat enough that he wasn’t planning on salvaging the dress shirt he’d worn that day, but it had been a good day. A day where his body felt like it had made some kind of progress, even if his mind hadn’t. 

He almost didn’t see it, he was so busy clearing out ignored emails from the day. In fact, he didn’t see it until his foot had nudged against it and the ensuing warmth soaked through his socks in just a few tiny pinpricks. Coffee. A cup of coffee on his welcome mat, and beside it a clear to-go container with a textbook perfect cannoli, powdered sugar almost glowing in the dim hall light. The minute he picked it up, the warm burnt-sugar smell of Cuban coffee wafted up to him, and his stomach lurched.

Rafael Barba was no fool. Born and raised in New York, he knew better than to eat or drink anything a stranger left on your porch.

But, Rafael Barba was no fool, and in his heart of hearts, he had a sliver of hope about exactly who was playing coffee fairy.


End file.
